Contamination of groundwater by trichloroethylene and other volatile halogenated solvents represents a serious threat to the nation's drinking water. Current treatment techniques for controlling such contamination are limited to aeration, adsorption, and linking. A promising alternative is photochemical oxidation, but this process is as yet unoptimized, poorly understood, and largely limited. Photox International has developed a new ultraviolet (UV) light source which will emit short wavelength UV efficiently. This lamp can impart much greater energy to destroy chemical bonds than commercially-available lamps and possibly eliminate the need for a chemical oxidant. This proposal discusses the research opportunity to use the new UV lamp to develop an economical process for oxidizing halogenated organic contaminants, specifically trichloroethylene, in water. The research goal is to determine the feasibility and scale-up factors for a novel photochemical process to oxidize trichloroethylene in groundwater. An economic analysis will be performed to evaluate its cost competitiveness with existing treatment technology.
