Palladium-gold nanoparticles clean TCE a billion times faster than iron filings
In the first side-by-side tests of a half-dozen palladium- and iron-based catalysts for cleaning up the carcinogen TCE, Rice University scientists have found that palladium destroys TCE far faster than iron -- up to a billion times faster in some cases.
The results will appear in a new study in the August issue of the journal Applied Catalysis B: Environmental.
TCE, or trichloroethene, is a widely used chemical degreaser and solvent that's found its way into groundwater supplies the world over. The TCE molecule, which contains two carbon atoms and three chlorine atoms, is very stable. That stability is a boon for industrial users, but it's a bane for environmental engineers.
"It's difficult to break those bonds between chlorine and carbon," said study author Michael Wong, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of chemistry at Rice. "Breaking some of the bonds, instead of breaking all the carbon-chlorine bonds, is a huge problem with some TCE treatment methods. Why? Because you make byproducts that are more dangerous than TCE, like vinyl chloride.
Because iron is considerably cheaper than palladium and easier to work with, it is already used in the field. Palladium, on the other hand, is still limited to field trials.
Wong led the development of a gold-palladium nanoparticle catalyst approach for TCE remediation in 2005. He found it was difficult to accurately compare the new technology with other iron- and palladium-based remediation schemes because no side-by-side tests had been published.
The researchers prepared a solution of water contaminated with TCE and tested each of the six catalysts to see how long they took to break down 90 percent of the TCE in the solution. This took less than 15 minutes for each of the palladium catalysts and more than 25 hours for the two iron nanoparticles. For the iron powder, it took more than 10 days.
"We knew from previous studies that palladium was faster, but I think everyone was a bit surprised to see how much faster in these side-by-side tests," Li said.
Wong said the new results should be helpful to those who are trying to compare the costs of conducting large-scale tests on catalytic remediation of TCE.
Additional co-authors include former Rice undergraduate Chris Romanczuk, former Rice graduate student Yu-Lun Fang and faculty members Zhaohui Jin and Tielong Li, both of Nankai University. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Welch Foundation and the China Scholarship Council.
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is known for its "unconventional wisdom." With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 4 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to www.rice.edu/nationalmedia/Rice.pdf.