Evaluating an Electrokinetically Driven Extraction Method for Measuring Heavy Metal Soil Contamination

Abstract

Measuring the heavy metal burden of “old contamination” soils (soils with aged contamination) can be challenging. Many laboratory procedures are currently in use and these can yield a wide range of burden estimates for the same soil. The appropriate extraction method selection depends on the intended use of the information and on compatibility with the procedures used to generate the “reference” data to which results are compared. In this work, results for an extraction based on the electrokinetic mobilization of old contamination heavy metals were compared to the results of established single analyte and sequential extraction methods. Accomplishing extractions electrokinetically offers promise for simplifying processes and for evaluating the electrokinetic remediation potential of old contamination soils. On the brownfield soils tested, electrokinetic extraction identified an average of 82% of the soil’s Cr, Cu, Pb, and Zn burden relative to Environmental Protection Agency Method 3050B extractions. However, results also indicated that neither of these methods were successful at extracting all of the sequestered (residual) fraction of heavy metals and thus underestimated the total contamination burden of the soil.