Kinetics of carbaryl degradation by anodic Fenton treatment in a humic-acid-amended artificial soil slurry.

A Fenton-based indirect electrochemical method, anodic Fenton treatment (AFT), developed for destroying and detoxifying pesticides in the aqueous environment, was evaluated for the degradation of a widely used pesticide, carbaryl, in an artificial soil slurry. More than 90% of carbaryl was removed in less than 20 minutes under given experimental conditions. The effect of initial slurry pH, humic acid content, initial carbaryl concentration, Fenton reagent delivery ratio, and soil/water ratio (w/v) were investigated. The results indicate that humic acid content is the key factor that slows down pesticide degradation, most probably because of its pH buffering and adsorption capacity. A kinetic model, which was shown to fit the experimental data quite well (R2 > 0.99), was developed to describe the carbaryl degradation in the soil slurry during the AFT process. In the presence of humic acid, carbaryl degradation kinetics was found to shift to a pseudo-first-order reaction after an "initiation" stage.