Effect of Charcoal and Active Carbon as Filter Media on Electrokinetic Remediated Crude Oil-Contaminated Soil

Abstract

Research has shown that traditional electrokinetic remediation (EKR) technology has limited efficiency against different contaminants and soils. This has led to the use of several strategies to enhance the traditional EKR for higher contaminants removal efficiency. This paper separately uses charcoal and active carbon each 1 cm thick as filter media in EKR to enhance the removal of crude oil from crude oil contaminated soil (COCS) containing 78,600 mg/kg of crude oil. The filters are placed very close to the anode compartment containing 0.01 M NaOH electrolytes. Graphite electrodes are used in a face to face configuration to pass 1 V DC/cm through the COCS. Crude oil removal efficiencies of 81.4% and 84.6% respectively are obtained from the EKR setups containing charcoal and active carbon filters after 18 days and 14 days of remediation respectively. This makes active carbon a better filter medium than charcoal for COCS. The results of the chemical oxides compositions show improvement from non-lateritic COCS to lateritic for the filter media enhanced EKR soil. Although active carbon has proven to be a better filter medium compared to charcoal for use in enhancing EKR technology for COCS. Nonetheless, with over 80% removal efficiency, charcoal or active carbon filters be used to enhance EKR remediation of COCS.