Ryoo W

Vol. 15,  No. 3, pp. 194-201, Sep.  2009

Nitrate nitrogen Zero-valent iron Nanoparticle Microemulsion Electrophoretic deposition

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Reductive reactivity of zero-valent iron nanoparticles was investigated for removal of nitratenitrogen which is considered one of the major water pollutants. To elucidate the difference in reactivity between preparation methods, iron nanoparticles were synthesized respectively from microemulsion and aqueous solution of ferric ions. Iron nanoparticles prepared from microemulsion were deposited on aluminum by electrophoretic method, and their reaction kinetics was compared to that of the same nanoparticles suspended in aqueous batch reaction. With an approximation of pseudo-first-order reaction, rate constants for suspended nanoparticles prepared from microemulsion and dilute aqueous solution were 3.49×10^(-2) min^(-1) and 1.40×10^(-2) min^(-1), respectively. Iron nanoparticles supported on aluminum showed ca. 30% less reaction rate in comparison with the identical nanoparticles in suspended state. However, supported nanoparticles showed the superior effectiveness in terms of nitrate-nitrogen removal per zero-valent iron input especially when excess amounts of nitrates were present. Iron nanoparticles deposited on aluminum maintained reductive reactivity for more than 3 hours, and produced nitrogen gas as a final reduction product of nitrate-nitrogen.