Thermal desorption of polychlorobiphenyls from contaminated soils and their hydrodechlorination using Pd- and Rh-supported catalysts

This paper reports about a combined technology for soil remediation from PCBs using the thermal desorption technique coupled with the catalytic hydrogenation of recovered PCBs. The reactor is a bench scale rotating desorption furnace through which nitrogen is flushed and used as carrier gas of desorbed PCBs. The latter are condensed into an hexane or hexane–acetone (1:1 v/v) solution that is then hydrogenated using phosphate-supported Pd or Rh as catalyst. The analysis of the treated soil, under variable operative conditions (temperature and desorption time), shows that the total (99.8%) decontamination from PCBs occurs. The recovery yield of the desorbed PCBs is better than 75% and the subsequent hydrogenation reaches 63% of the collected PCBs in 5 h or 100% in 12 h.