Overcoming barriers to the remediation of carbon tetrachloride through manipulation of competing reaction mechanisms

Most approaches that have been proposed for the remediation of groundwater contaminated with CCl ₄ produce chloroform as the major product and methylene chloride as a minor product. Both of these products are nearly as persistent and problematic as the parent compound, but competing reaction pathways produce the more desirable products CO and/or formate. To improve the applicability of reductive remediation technologies to the large plumes of CCl ₄ at several DOE sites, the complete characterization of the mechanisms and kinetics of competing degradation reactions of CCl ₄ were studied through laboratory experiments closely coordinated with theoretical modeling studies. The results are starting to suggest strategies for maximizing the yield of desirable products from CCl ₄ degradation, which will be tested in column model systems using real site waters and matrix materials. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 227th ACS National Meeting (Anaheim, CA 3/28/2004-4/1/2004).