Research progress in the use of ferrate(VI) for the environmental remediation

The aim of this paper is to review the research progress of using ferrate(VI) in following fields of environmental remediation: (1) water disinfection; (2) degradation of synthetic organic pollutants; (3) treatment of emerging organic pollutants; (4) oxidation of inorganic pollutants; (5) removing humic substance; (6) wastewater treatment and disinfection; and (7) sewage sludge treatment. Whilst the superior performance of potassium ferrate(VI) as an oxidant/disinfectant for the environmental remediation has been demonstrated in various recent researches, challenges have existed to the implementation of ferrate(VI) technology in full-scale water, wastewater and sewage sludge treatment owing to either the instability property of a ferrate(VI) solution or a high preparation cost of a solid ferrate(VI). In addition to this, there are some fundamental issues which have not yet been studied thoroughly which are crucial for the implementation of ferrate(VI)-these lead to the future research work recommended by this paper. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.