It, according to Koerner, technology transfer associate at Research Corp. Technologies, is a new process of decontaminating water and soils developed in the chemistry department at The University of Arizona. TCE has been classified as hazardous to human health above five parts per million, and the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as all state governments, require cleanup of TCE-contaminated groundwater. Current methods of cleaning contaminated water involve either air stripping or absorption of the chlorinated organics into activated carbon. The problem then is how to dispose of or destroy the resulting toxic gases or the contaminated carbon, a costly problem. Fernando's process merely passes the contaminated water through a tube containing chunks of iron rod coated with palladium, at ambient temperatures.
Clean water emerges from the other end of the tube.
These surprising results have been confirmed by gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy, both in the UA chem lab and with more sophisticated equipment at the Oak Ridge Environmental Sciences Division. Quintus Fernando and Frank Cheng discuss future projects for the lab. I'd like to take this out into the field and solve the problems in applying this technology. Doctoral candidate Carina Grittini has also been dedicated to this project for two years. She has focussed on the application of the new technology to PCBs and aromatics.