REVIEW PAPER A review of combinations of electrokinetic applications Mohamad Jamali Moghadam . Hossein Moayedi . Masoud Mirmohamad Sadeghi . Alborz Hajiannia Received: 1 May 2015 / Accepted: 8 January 2016 / Published online: 16 January 2016 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 Abstract Anthropogenic activities contaminate many lands and underground waters with dangerous materials. Although polluted soils occupy small parts of the land, the risk they pose to plants, animals, humans, and groundwater is too high. Remediation technologies have been used for many years in order to mitigate pollution or remove pollutants from soils. However, there are some deficiencies in the remedi- ation in complex site conditions such as low perme- ability and complex composition of some clays or heterogeneous subsurface conditions. Electrokinetic is an effective method in which electrodes are embedded in polluted soil, usually vertically but in some cases horizontally, and a low direct current voltage gradient is applied between the electrodes. The electric gradi- ent initiates movement of contaminants by electromi- gration (charged chemical movement), electro- osmosis (movement of fluid), electrolysis (chemical reactions due to the electric field), and diffusion. However, sites that are contaminated with heavy metals or mixed contaminants (e.g. a combination of organic compounds with heavy metals and/or radionu- clides) are difficult to remediate. There is no technol- ogy that can achieve the best results, but combining electrokinetic with other remediation methods, such as bioremediation and geosynthetics, promises to be the most effective method so far. This review focuses on the factors that affect electrokinetic remediation and the state-of-the-art methods that can be combined with electrokinetic. Keywords Electrokinetic Á Soil pollution Á Remediation Á Contaminant Á Electrically conductive geosynthetic Introduction There are many lands that are contaminated by anthropogenic activities. In some cases, harmful substances such as heavy metals or dangerous organic compounds exist in the soil matrix and underground waters. About 63 % of the land on the national priority list (NPL) of the USA (from a total of 1200 sites) is contaminated by toxic and risky heavy metals. Among the toxic heavy metals, lead, chromium, and cadmium are most commonly found at NPL sites, respectively (Consultant 1996). Although polluted soils occupy only a small part of the lands, the risk to plants, animals, humans, and groundwater is too high. M. J. Moghadam (&) Á A. Hajiannia Department of Civil Engineering, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran e-mail: E.jamali.m@gmail.com H. Moayedi Department of Civil Engineering, Kermanshah University of Technology, Kermanshah, Iran e-mail: Hossein.moayedi@gmail.com M. M. Sadeghi Isfahan Higher Education and Research Center of Water and Power, Isfahan, Iran 123 Environ Geochem Health (2016) 38:1217–1227 DOI 10.1007/s10653-016-9795-3