Effect of Carrier Gas Flow Rate in Thermal Desorption Process of PCBs Contaminated Soil

A real PCBs contaminated soil was heated at 500 degrees C using pure nitrogen as carrier gas under different flow rate to investigate the influence of carrier gas flow rate on the thermal desorption process. After 1 hour thermal treatment, the residual PCBs in soil decreased and the removal efficiency (RE) of PCBs is up to 95.1%. The distributions of PCBs in soil under different flow rate were identical. The World Health Organization toxic equivalency quantity (WHO TEQ) of PCBs in soil got its lowest value at 400Nml/min. Tetra- and higher chlorinated PCBs desorbed to carrier gas increased with increased flow rate, while the total amount of PCBs, Tri- and lower chlorinated PCBs first increased then decreased. The distributions of PCBs in carrier gas became more closely to the raw soil with increased flow rate. The TEQ of PCBs in carrier gas increased with increased flow rate. Increased flow rate enhanced the mass transfer of PCBs in the soil but shortened the preheating time of carrier gas and the retention time of carries gas, weakening the mass transfer and degradation process in gas phase. The RE of WHO TEQ of PCDDs in treated soil decreased from 86.7% to 83.2% with increased flow rate while the RE of WHO TEQ of PCDFs decreased from 85.4% to 70.0%. After thermal treatment process, the total amount of PCDD/Fs TEQ in soil and carrier gas increase from 43.8% to 18.6% times of that in raw soil. Considering removal efficiency of PCBs and PCDD/Fs and generation of PCDD/Fs in soil and gas phase, an optimized flow rate should be set at about 400Nml/min.