Research progress on remediation of petroleum contaminated soil by persulfate: Existing technologies, degradation pathway and future direction

Petroleum spills pose serious hazards to the soil environment and human health. In the last decade, persulfate (PS) has been widely used as a strong oxidant for the remediation of petroleum contaminated soils. This paper aims to review the methods of remediation of petroleum contaminated soils with persulfate and their advantages and disadvantages, and to discuss the effects of experimental and environmental factors on the remediation techniques of contaminated soils with persulfate. The bibliometric tools of R language and bibliometric webpage are used to analyze the technological development trend, summarise the current popular methods of persulfate remediation of petroleum contaminated soils, and look forward to the direction of green development of persulfate remediation of petroleum contaminated soils. It is proposed that density functional theory and GC-MS can be corroborated with each other to obtain the intermediates and degradation pathways of petroleum hydrocarbons, which will provide a theoretical basis for the degradation of petroleum hydrocarbons by persulfate. Finally, the combination of persulfate remediation technology with machine learning is proposed, which will help to optimize resources and time in the work of persulfate remediation of petroleum contaminated soil.