Artificial Alteration of Soil Organic Matter by Microwave Irradiation
Soil organic matter (SOM) plays a critical role in reactivity, bioavailability, and ultimate fate of various organic and inorganic contaminants in the geo-environment. Association between SOM and contaminants, therefore, has been extensively studied in a numerous number of studies by characterizing the properties of SOM. In particular, the physico-chemical characteristics of SOM have been known to be related to its geo-chemical diagenetic status. In this work, a relatively less energy-requiring irradiation technique, microwave irradiation, was employed to promote the alteration of physico-chemical properties of SOM. As opposed to the natural SOM evolution process (i.e., diagenesis) that requires an extremely long geological-scale period, our artificial change of SOM properties using microwave irradiation can be accomplished in a very short time frame (i.e., reactor process scale). Microwave was irradiated to the soil collected from a pristine area (no contamination history) by varying irradiation time under anaerobic condition. After irradiation, the SOM was extracted and fractionated into biopolymer, fulvic and humic acids, and the physical and chemical properties of each fraction were analyzed by UV absorbance spectroscopy and elemental analysis. These quantitative and qualitative analyses on the irradiated SOM confirmed that the early diagenetic process (i.e., humification) was stimulated by the microwave irradiation: the SOM became more humic-acid containing, hydrophobic, and aromatic, less functional group possessing, and highly condensed and macro molecule organic substance, compared to the original SOM. Such humification-like alteration may have been attributed to thermal effects and radical reaction particularly when activated carbon was added as a supplement in the irradiation process. Next stage of this work on the binding of representative organic and inorganic contaminants and artificially altered SOM by microwave irradiation is expected to provide a better understanding about the impacts of microwaveirradiation on the fate of geo-environmental contaminants. To the end, our microwave irradiation technique can demonstrate a potential as a new, costeffective, and performance-efficient remediation technology for the contaminated soils and sediments.
soil organic matter microwave humification diagenesis
Min-Chan KIM Han S.KIM
Department of Advanced Technology Fusion,Konkuk University,1 Gwangjin-gu,Hwayang-dong,Seoul,Korea,14 Department of Environmental Engineering,College of Engineering,Konkuk University,1 Gwangjin-gu,Hwaya
国际会议
2009 International Symposium on Environmental Science and Technology(2009环境科学与技术国际会议)
上海
英文
1869-1874
2009-06-02（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）