Progress in Zerovalent Iron Technology for Water Treatment of Metal (loid) (oxyan) Ions: A Golden Decade from 2011 to 2021

The application of the zerovalent iron (ZVI) for water treatment of metal(loid) (oxyan) ions has been a research hotspot in recent years. In practical applications, how to simultaneously improve the reactivity and electron efficiency of contaminants sequestration by ZVI are highly critical for the progress in ZVI over line based technology. This review summarizes the improvements of ZVI technologies proposed in the past 10 years (2011-2021), including the sulfidation, weak magnetic field (WMF), dosing of Fe2+ and oxidants, along with other novel technologies. In addition, the performances (e.g., reactivity, removal capacity and electronic efficiency) and mechanisms of these technologies for contaminants removal are summarized and compared. The enhanced performance of ZVI technology should be complementarily analyzed not only from the broad over line spectrum studies of different systems but also from the specific study of a single system. Finally, in order to promote the further improvement and development of ZVI technology, the future research direction of ZVI technology is outlooked. This review is expected to provide a new research direction and a complete theoretical basis for improving the performances of ZVI technology in real environmental application.