Assessment of transport of two polyelectrolyte-stabilized zero-valent iron nanoparticles in porous media

This study investigated the breakthrough patterns of carboxymethyl cellulose- and polyacrylic acid-stabilized zero-valent iron (Fe0) nanoparticles (NZVI) from packed sand columns under a range of pore water velocities of 0.02, 0.2 and 1 cm min− 1 and NZVI influent concentrations of 0.1, 0.5 and 3 g L− 1. The NZVI effluent relative concentrations of both types of particles decreased with slower flow velocities and increasing particle concentrations. PAA-NZVI exhibited slower elution from the columns than CMC-NZVI under identical experimental conditions, and this is attributed to more rapid aggregation kinetics of PAA-NZVI. The elution patterns of PAA-NZVI showed a stronger trend of gradually increasing effluent concentrations with flushing of additional pore volumes, especially at low flushing velocities and higher influent particle concentrations and this phenomenon too can be attributed to increasing aggregate sizes with time which caused decreases in the values of the single collector efficiency and thus the deposition rate constant. A 7 nm increase in CMC-NZVI aggregate size over 60 min was observed using nanoparticle tracking analysis. The reduction in colloidal stability due to aggregation of CMC- and PAA-NZVI was verified using sedimentation tests, and it was found that PAA-NZVI were less stable than CMC-NZVI. There were also notable inherent differences in the two NZVI particles. The CMC-NZVI were monodisperse with a mean diameter of 5.7 ± 0.9 nm, whereas PAA-NZVI had a bimodal particle size distribution with a small sub-population of particles with mean size of 30 ± 21 nm and a more abundant population of 4.6 ± 0.8 nm diameter particles. Furthermore, PAA-NZVI had a lower surface potential. These characteristics are also responsible for the different elution patterns CMC- and PAA-NZVI.