Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

DOI

10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.170971

Publication Title

Science of the Total Environment

Volume

922

Pages

170971 (1-12)

Abstract

Sustainable and effective remediation technologies for the treatment of soil contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are greatly needed. This study investigated the effects of waste-based biochars on the leaching of PFAS from a sandy soil with a low total organic carbon content (TOC) of 0.57 ± 0.04% impacted by PFAS from aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) dispersed at a former fire-fighting facility. Six different biochars (pyrolyzed at 700–900°C) were tested, made from clean wood chips (CWC), waste timber (WT), activated waste timber (aWT), two digested sewage sludges (DSS-1 and DSS-2) and de-watered raw sewage sludge (DWSS). Up-flow column percolation tests (15 days and 16 pore volume replacements) with 1% biochar indicated that the dominant congener in the soil, perfluorooctane sulphonic acid (PFOS) was retained best by the aWT biochar with a 99.9% reduction in the leachate concentration, followed by sludge-based DWSS (98.9 %) and DSS-2 and DSS-1 (97.8% and 91.6%, respectively). The non-activated wood-based biochars (CWC and WT) on the other hand, reduced leaching by <42.4 %. Extrapolating this to field conditions, 90% leaching of PFOS would occur after 15 y for unamended soil, and after 1200 y and 12,000 y, respectively, for soil amended with 1 % DWSS-amended and aWT biochar. The high effectiveness of aWT and the three sludge-based biochars in reducing PFAS leaching from the soil was attributed largely to high porosity in a pore size range (>1.5 nm) that can accommodate the large PFAS molecules (>1.02–2.20 nm) combined with a high affinity to the biochar matrix. Other factors like anionic exchange capacity could play a contributing role. Sorbent effectiveness was better for long-chain than for short-chain PFAS, due to weaker, apolar interactions between the biochar and the latter's shorter hydrophobic CF2-tails. The findings were the first to demonstrate that locally sourced activated wood-waste biochars and non-activated sewage sludge biochars could be suitable sorbents for the ex situ stabilization and in situ remediation of PFAS-contaminated soil, bringing this technology one step closer to full-scale field testing.

Rights

© 2024 The Authors.

This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

Data Availability

Article states: "Data will be made available on request."

Original Publication Citation

Sørmo, E., Lade, C. B. M., Zhang, J., Asimakopoulos, A. G., Åsli, G. W., Hubert, M., Goranov, A. I., Arp, H. P. H., & Cornelissen, G. (2024). Stabilization of PFAS-contaminated soil with sewage sludge- and wood-based biochar sorbents. Science of the Total Environment, 922, 1-12, Article 170971. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.170971

ORCID

0000-0002-5103-0838 (Goranov)

Download

Share

COinS