Abstract
Electrokinetic remediation (EKR) is becoming a popular technique for removal of heavy metals from polluted soils, but its low efficiency induced from high pH area should be improved. It is known that the proper arrangement of electric field direction and intensity may influence the migration of H^+^ and OH^−^ by direction and distance, which means that basic and acid zones can be optimized through electric field orientation arrangement. The aim of this work is to study the influence of the arrangement of electrodes on acid/basic zone, minimizing basic area and maximizing acid area in the soil. In this paper, five soil samples named TQ1, TQ2, TQ2, B55, and B60 were treated by EKR with different two‐dimensional (2D) electrodes arrangement, in order to investigate the effect of electrode configurations on the distribution of pH and copper ions removal. Based on the results of copper removal, energy consumption, effective area, and the percentage of acid, basic and pH jump area, the best electrode configuration would be a cathode–anode–cathode arrangement with 60° angle. It can also be seen from the results that only in the area of pH < 4, copper ions could be removed effectively. Copyright © 2009 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.