Decontaminating water
Environmental engineers at the Tampere University of Technology, Finland, have successfully demonstrated an efficient method to clean up chlorophenol-contaminated groundwater without first having to heat it up (Environmental Science & Technology, Vol 28, No 13).
Widely used as wood-preservatives, chlorophenols are known to pollute surface as well as groundwater. Conventional methods to remove chlorophenols are reliable only at room temperature (20oC to 30oC) which is well above the groundwater temperature. But the method developed by Kimmo Jarvinen and colleagues that uses sand, vulcanite mineral, silica-based material called Celite R-633 and pumice, could eliminate over 99.9 per cent of chlorophenol from groundwater at temperatures between 5oC and 7oC.
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