A novel integrated active capping technique for the remediation of nitrobenzene-contaminated sediment

The objective of this study was to develop a novel integrated active capping system and to investigate its efficiency in the remediation of nitrobenzene-contaminated sediment. An integrated Fe(0)-sorbent-microorganism remediation system was proposed as an in situ active capping technique to remediate nitrobenzene-contaminated sediment. In this system, nitrobenzene was reduced to aniline by Fe(0), which has a much better biodegradability. The sorption capacity and structural properties of cinder was measured to examine its applicability as the sorbent and matrix for this integrated capping system. Indigenous microorganisms from Songhuajiang River sediment, which was contaminated by nitrobenzene and aniline in Chinese Petrochemical Explosion in Jilin, were acquired one month after the explosion and used in this active capping system to degrade nitrobenzene and its reduced product, aniline. A bench-scale remediation experiment was conducted on a mimicked nitrobenzene-contaminated sediment to investigate the efficiency of the integrated capping system and the synergistic effects of the combined components in the active capping system. The results show that this integrated active capping system can effectively block the release of target pollutants into the upper-layer water and remove the compounds from the environment.