Electrochimica Acta 86 (2012) 138–141 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Electrochimica Acta j ourna l ho me pag e: www.elsevier.com/locate/electacta Electroremediation of contaminated soil by heavy metals using ion exchange fibers O. Souilah a , D.E. Akretche a,∗ , C. Cameselle b a Laboratory of Hydrometallurgy and Inorganic Molecular Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, USTHB, BP 32, El-Alia, 16111 Bab Ezzouar, Algiers, Algeria b Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Vigo, Rua Maxwell s/n, Building Fundicion, 36310 Vigo, Spain a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 9 November 2011 Received in revised form 20 April 2012 Accepted 24 April 2012 Available online 4 May 2012 Keywords: Electrokinetic remediation Ion exchange fiber Lead Zinc a b s t r a c t Electrokinetic remediation has become a usual process for the removal of contaminants from soils. Var- ious materials and products are used in the electrokinetic treatment to improve the efficiency of this technique. Ion exchange membranes have been tested resulting in an enhancement of the metal removal selectivity and permits good control of the pH. On the other hand, the use of membranes permits the contaminants to be isolated and concentrated in a separate compartment. In this work, other materials different than membranes have been tested through electroremediation of a kaolinite specimen con- taminated with lead and zinc. Ion exchange fibers have been tested playing similar role of membranes. However, fibers are based on a cellulosic structure which gives to the fibers hydrophilic properties. Thus, fibers have shown a good mechanical structure and have enhanced the electro-osmotic flux with a better selectivity against ions less hydrated as lead. Removal yields were increased for lead and zinc while the latter is more retained inside the cation exchange fibers. © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. 1. Introduction Soil contamination became a concerned problem giving rise to many laboratory studies in recent years. It is due to the fact that various phenomena and numerous factors can intervene as pollu- tants provoking serious dangers to the human health. Heavy metals are generated from the factors which are the most difficult to elim- inate. Electrokinetic soil remediation is one of the in situ process that has been recently developed for the metal removing. Depend- ing on the nature and the extent of a studied pollution, particular scheme have been adapted to improve electrokinetic processing. The disposal of cationic and anionic exchange membranes allows the transport of contaminants present in the sample under inves- tigation [1–7]. Thus, highly mobile ions from the electrolytes are excluded from being transported and carrying a valuable frac- tion of current. Ottosen et al. [2,6], Hansen et al. [4] and Ribeiro et al. [3,7] demonstrated the advantages of using such materials in the enhancement of the soil decontamination. To improve the selectivity and the remediation yields, other materials have been developed (e.g. ion exchange fibers). Ion exchange fibers were used first as suppressor materials for ion exchange chromatography, ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 213 21 247298; fax: +1 213 21 247298. E-mail addresses: dakretche@hotmail.com, dakretche@yahoo.fr (D.E. Akretche). improving the baseline stability and decreasing ion exclusion effects and chemical reactions [8]. Then, fibers usage was promoted by their high separation capacity, fast ion exchange rate and good electrical conductivity [9]. The applications of such fibers are wide ranging and include the separation of rare earth elements [10], enrichment of uranium from seawater [11], purification of air by the removal of acidic or alkaline impurities [12] and chromato- graphic methods [13–15]. Recently, it has also been proposed to use ion exchange fibers in medical and pharmaceutical applica- tions [16–18]. In this work, ion exchange membranes were replaced by ion exchange fibers in an electrokinetic cell where the remov- ing of lead and zinc from a kaolinite is studied. Fibers have better mechanical properties than ion exchange membranes and they are characterized by a high hydrophilicity in comparison to mem- branes regarding their cellulosic structure as it was shown early by many authors [19–21]. Basta et al. [19] have noticed that the macroporous and hydrophilic structure of the fibers ion exchange induces ion mobility inside them that can be compared to those in aqueous solutions. Soulier and al. [20] have confirmed that the fiber hydrophility is due to the cellulosic polymer network and that the exchange rate is faster due to the absence of crosslinking. On the other hand, Ezzahar et al. [21] have found that ion exchange fibers are a non-woven fibrous material grafted under irradiation. They also showed that, contrary to the polymers of ion exchange mem- branes, the cellulosic macromolecular chains of the ion exchange fibers are hydrophilic and uncrosslinked. 0013-4686/$ – see front matter © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electacta.2012.04.089