Laboratory Assessment of Advanced Oxidation Processes for Treatment of Explosives and Chlorinated Solvents in Groundwater from the Former Nebraska Ordnance Plant

Chemical oxidation processes that result in the generation of the hydroxyl radical OH have been referred to as advanced oxidation processes AOPs by the American Water Works Association. The U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station under the direction of the U.S. Army Engineer District, Kansas City, and in conjunction with Woodward-Clyde Consultants, Overland Park, KS, evaluated the comparative performance of four AOPs for removing trichloroethylene, RDX, HMX, trinitrotoluene, and 1,3,5-trinitrobenzene from a representative sample of groundwater from the Nebraska Ordnance Plant using bench-scale reactors. During 1990, this site was placed on the National Priorities List. Candidate AOPs that were evaluated were irradiation of hydrogen peroxide with ultraviolet UV light emitted from low-pressure mercury vapor UV lamps LPUV-HP, irradiation with UV light emitted from a low-pressure mercury vapor UV lamp with ozone sparging LPUV-OZ, irradiation of hydrogen peroxide with Uv light emitted from a medium-pressure mercury vapor UV lamp MPUV-HP, and peroxone ozone sparging with hydrogen peroxide dosing. The groundwater influent sample used in this study was a three-way composite equal parts of groundwater collected from three site observation wells Wells MW-11A, MW-40B, and MW-47B. The experiments were performed using a 1-l borosilicate reactor configured to sparge ozone into the test solution.