Pesticides Remediation from Soil and Water Accessing to Zero Residue Level

Abstract

Contamination of soil and water with various types of pesticides, resulting from accidental spills at agrochemical manufacturing, formulation, and distribution facilities, farm loading/washdown sites, or abandoned waste sites, is a serious environmental problem in many places in the world. The remediation of two types of pesticides which were (pirimicarb and imidacloprid) from three types of Iraqi soils (sandy, silty loam, and clayey) was investigated in this study. The treatment process for soils was carried out through washing method using distilled water in a packed bed column then; a continuous fixed bed unit was used to perform the removal of the same two types of pesticides from wasted washing polluted water using adsorption technique at different operating conditions with low-cost adsorbents: watermelon peel (WP) and used tea leaves (UTL). The results show that the maximum removal efficiencies of pesticide from polluted soils were 75.375, 86.283, and 99.786 percentage for clayey, silty loam, and sandy soils, respectively, of pirimicarb pesticides, and 71.651, 77.708, and 93.278 percentage for clayey, silty loam, and sandy soils, respectively, of imidacloprid pesticides. Finally, in this study a novel way was suggested and experimented as a safe, economic, beneficial, and eco-friendly non-conventional method to get rid of the WP and UTL loaded with pirimicarb and imidacloprid pesticides wasted. This method was trying to convert these toxic residues to applicable useful material like rodenticide. The results show that good ability for these residues to be an active rodenticide through the calculated mean lethal dosage, LD-50.