Managing groundwater plumes of dissolved nitroaromatic and cyclic nitramine

high priority at military facilities where site management costs can be very high. A novel approach to control plume migration utilizes electrolytic permeable reactive barriers to degrade these chemical in situ. This research focuses on characterizing the relationship between electrode surface morphology and composition with the rate of electrochemical reduction for mixtures of cyclic nitramines and nitroaromatics. The electrode material studied consists of a mixed metal oxide (IrO2/TiO2) coated titanium mesh (Ti/MMO). The surfaces of previously unused electrodes are relatively rough and fractured, exposing large amounts of IrO2. Observed first-order heterogeneous rate constants, at cathode potentials of -1.2 V vs. the standard hydrogen electrode, for 1,3,5-trinitrotoluene (TNT) and hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX) on fresh electrodes are approximately 0.1 cm min in experiments with a single reactant. These are roughly two to three orders of magnitude larger than reduction kinetics on Fe surfaces for TNT and RDX, respectively.