Study on surfactants remediation in heavy metals contaminated soils

Heavy metals pollution in soils has become a serious problem in nowadays. The aim of this paper is to find the optimum condition for surfactants remove heavy metals in the sandy soils and clay soils. The controlling conditions were including the soil/solution ratio, the types of surfactants (SDS, CTAB, Tween 80), moral ratio and pH values. Comparison three kinds of surfactants, the anionic surfactant (SDS) have good extraction ability than cationic surfactant (CTAB) and nonionic surfactant (Tween 80) for five kinds of single contaminated in sandy soils, SDS>;CTAB>;Tween80. Meanwhile, under the condition of soil/solution ratio 1:50, moral ratio 15:1 and pH 4, the five kinds of heavy metals Cu, Zn, Pb, Ni and Cd could get highest removal rate. Comparison two kinds of soils which were sandy soils and clay soils, it is not suitable to remove heavy metals in the clay soils using surfactants as extracting agents.