Efficient simultaneous removal of heavy metals and polychlorobiphenyls from a polluted industrial site by washing the soil with natural humic surfactants

We evaluated the effectiveness of natural organic surfactants such as humic acids (HA) from lignite to simultaneously wash heavy metals (HM) and polychlorobiphenyls (PCB) from a heavily contaminated industrial soil of northern Italy. Supramolecular HA promote in solution a micelle-like structure, where recalcitrant apolar organic xenobiotics are repartitioned from surfaces of soil particles during soil washing process. Concomitantly, the HA acidic functional groups enable a simultaneous complexation of HM. A single soil washing with HA removed 68 and 75% of PCB congeners for 1:1 and 10:1 solution/soil ratios, respectively. The same HA washing simultaneously and efficiently removed a cumulative average of 47% of total HM, with a maximum of 57 and 67% for Hg and Cu, respectively. We showed that washing a highly polluted soil with HA solution not only is an effective and rapid soil remediation technique but also simultaneously removes both HM and persistent organic pollutants (POP). Soil washing by humic biosurfactants is also a sustainable and eco-friendly technology, since, contrary to synthetic surfactants and solvents used in conventional washing techniques, it preserves soil biodiversity, promotes natural attenuation of unextracted POP, and accelerates further soil reclamation techniques such as bio- or phytoremediation.