Removal of Pollutants from Solid Matrices Using Supercritical Fluids

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Abstract
Several supercritical fluid extraction (SCFE) processes have been proposed for removing toxic and intractable organic compounds from a range of contaminated solids. These include soil remediation and the regeneration of adsorbents used to treat wastewater streams such as granular activated carbon (GAC). As a separation technique for environmental control, SCFE has several distinct advantages over conventional liquid extraction methods and incineration. Most notably, the contaminant is removed from the solvent in a concentrated form via a change in pressure or temperature and can be completely separated upon expansion to atmospheric pressure. The viability of SCFE hinges on process conditions such as solvent-feed ratio and solvent recycle ratio. The necessity of recycling solvent complicates the contaminant separation step since a complete reduction to atmospheric pressure would create large recompression costs. Because of this, the pressure and temperature dependence of contaminant solubility must be understood so that operating conditions for the separation step can be defined. Fortunately, this is the most developed aspect of SCF technology. However. the mass transfer limitations to removing contaminants from solids change with solvent flow rate. This paper discusses the use of SCFE for environmental control and presents results for the removal of DDT and 2-chlorophenol from GAC. 2-chlorophenol is almost completely removed with pure CO2 at 40°C and 101 bar while only 55% of the DDT is removed at 40°C and 200 bar. These differences in regeneration efficiency cannot be understood solely in terms of solubility but point to a need for detailed studies of adsorption equilibrium and mass transfer resistances in supercritical fluid systems.

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