A review of permeable reactive barrier as passive sustainable technology for groundwater remediation

The pollution of groundwater by organic or inorganic pollutants, originating from either soil leaching or anthropogenic activities, is one of the major environmental issues. Remediation of this water source is of highest priority because many countries use it for drinking purpose. Pump-and-treat method is represented for many decades the major technique to treat groundwater infected with organic/inorganic pollutants. In last two decades, this technique becomes to be in lack with the sense of modern concepts of sustainability and renewable energy. Permeable reactive barriers (PRBs) technology was introduced as an alternative method for traditional pump-and-treat systems to remediate contaminated groundwater that was achieving these concepts. Within this issue, this technology has been proven to be a successful and most efficient promising method used by many researchers and in several projects due to its direct and simple techniques to remediate groundwater. A rapid progress from bench scale to field scale implementation in the PRB technique is recognized through the last few years. In addition, this technique was modeled theoretically for characterizing the migration of contaminants spatially and temporally through the barrier and, consequently, these models can be used for estimating the longevity of this barrier. An overview of this technique and the promising horizons for scientific research that integrates this method with sustainability and green technology practices are presented in the present study.