Combined soil washing and CDEO for the removal of atrazine from soils.

In this work, it is studied the removal of atrazine from spiked soils by soil washing using surfactant fluids, followed by the treatment of the resulting washing waste by electrolysis with boron doped diamond (BDD) anode. Results confirm that combination of both technologies is efficient for the removal and total mineralization of atrazine. Ratio surfactant/soil is a key parameter for the removal of atrazine from soil and influences significantly in the characteristic of the wastewater produced, affecting not only to the total organic load but also to the mean size of micelles. The higher the ratio surfactant soil, the lower is the size of the particles. Electrolyses of this type of waste attain the complete mineralization. TOC and COD are removed from the start of the treatment but the key of the treatment is the reduction in size of the micelles, which lead to a higher negative charge in the surface and to the faster depletion of the surfactant as compared with the pesticide.