Dr. Denis O'Carroll was invited to give a talk on Engineering Special Seminar：From PFAS to the application of new in-situ remediation technologies in the field.
Denis O’Carroll is a Future Fellow and Professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), the Deputy Head of School (Research), and the Managing Director at Water Research Laboratory. Prior to moving to UNSW in 2015 he was an Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Western Ontario. He is an Associate Editor for Water Resources Research, the Vadose Zone Journal and the Journal of Contaminant Hydrology. He has ongoing research projects developing nanometals for contaminated site remediation, investigating the environmental fate and ecotoxicity of nanoparticles released from commercial products, improving the understanding of the fate of nonaqueous phase liquids in the subsurface and developing climate change mitigation measures in urban areas.
Abstract:
A range of innovative contaminated site remediation technologies have been developed and implemented, including reduction and oxidation-based processes. However, achievement of remediation goals at many contaminated sites is still difficult due to challenges associated with delivering amendments uniformly throughout contaminated zones, including low permeability media, ability of remediation technologies to degrade the wide range of contaminants present at a given site and the long-term reactivity of an amendment. This talk will discuss field studies that evaluated the extent to which application of electrokinetic could uniformly distribute amendments in clay at a contaminated site and the application of SnZVI to treat a wide range of in situ contaminants. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are emerging contaminants and their surfactants allow them to readily partition to interfaces - a process that governs their environmental fate. Some PFAS readily sorb to soil and sediment, partition to the air/water interface in the vadose zone or partition to atmospheric dust. This talk also provides an overview of our predictive models that predict a wide range of PFAS interfacial partitioning under a range of environmentally relevant geochemical conditions (i.e., as a function of ionic strength and salt valency). It will also touch on our efforts to develop reductive PFAS degradation technologies.
