Abstract: With the increasingly serious environmental problem of groundwater pollution in China, the remediation of polluted groundwater is extremely urgent. Permeable reactive barrier(PRB)is a new technology for groundwater remediation of contaminated sites, which can effectively remove organic chlorides, heavy metals and inorganic ions with the advantages of good treatment effect, low cost and little impact on ecology and environment. PRB technology has been widely used in the engineering field and commercialized in the United States, which is currently used in the laboratory research and field-pilot demonstration in China. The contaminants-removing principles, structure types, active packing materials, reactive mechanism and engineering application of PRB system were summarized, and the technical issues of long-term effective performance of PRB system, as well as the application prospects and key research directions of PRB technology were pointed out, so as to provide references for the R&D and application of PRB technology and the remediation of polluted groundwater in China.