Palladium-catalyzed hydrodehalogenation of 1,2,4,5-tetrachlorobenzene in water-ethanol mixtures

Palladium-catalyzed hydrodehalogenation (HDH) was applied for destroying 1,2,4,5-tetrachlorobenzene (TeCB) in mixtures of water and ethanol. This investigation was performed as a critical step in the development of a new technology for clean-up of soil contaminated by halogenated hydrophobic organic contaminants. The main goals of the investigation were to demonstrate the feasibility of the technology, to determine the effect of the solvent composition (water:ethanol ratio), and to develop a model for the kinetics of the dehalogenation process. All experiments were conducted in a batch reactor at ambient temperature under mild hydrogen pressure. The experimental results are all consistent with a Langmuir-Hinshelwood model for heterogeneous catalysis. Major findings that can be interpreted within the Langmuir-Hinshelwood framework include: (1) the rate of hydrodehalogenation depends strongly on the solvent composition, increasing as the water fraction of the solvent increases; (2) the HDH rate increases as the catalyst concentration in the reactor increases; (3) when enough catalyst is present, the HDH reaction appears to follow first-order kinetics, but the kinetics appear to be zero-order at low catalyst concentrations. TeCB is converted rapidly and quantitatively to benzene, with only trace concentrations of 1,2,4-trichlorobenzene appearing as a reactive intermediate. The results obtained here have important implications for the further development of the proposed soil remediation technology, and may also be important for the treatment of other hazardous waste streams.