PNNL

Abstract

The interaction of Fe0 with chlorinated hydrocarbons in an aqueous environment is important for the utilization of Fe0 nanoparticles in groundwater remediation technologies. This article builds upon prior work that utilized an "atom dropping" technique to show that Fe0 atoms react readily with pure CCl4 and D2O upon contact at 30 K to form the ClFeCCl3 and DFeOD insertion complexes, respectively. Here we deposit Fe atoms into films containing both D2O and CCl4 as separate layers. Temperature programmed desorption (TPD) is used to show that the ClFeCCl3 and DFeOD insertion complexes are unreactive with each other and both molecular D2O and CCl4 up to the desorption temperature of each species on an FeO(111) substrate. These results suggest that the Fe insertion complexes are energetically favorable and are thus relatively stable with respect to subsequent reactions.