Remediation of a Petroleum Hydrocarbon-Contaminated Site by Soil Vapor Extraction: A Full-Scale Case Study

Abstract

Spills, leaks, and other environmental aspects associated with petroleum products cause hazards to human health and ecosystems. Chemicals involved are total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), solvents, pesticides, and other heavy metals. Soil vapor extraction (SVE) is one of the main in-situ technologies currently employed for the remediation of groundwater and vadose zone contaminated with volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The performance of an SVE remediation system was examined for a petroleum hydrocarbon-contaminated site with attention to remediation targets and final performance. The study assessed: (1) the efficiency of a full-scale remediation system and (2) the influence of parameters affecting the treatment system effectiveness. Results showed how VOC concentration in soil was highly reduced after four year treatment with a global effectiveness of 73%. Some soil samples did not reach the environmental threshold limits and, therefore, an extension of the remediation period was required. The soil texture, humidity, permeability, and the category of considered pollutants were found to influence the amount of total extracted VOCs.

An innovative method for soil vapor extraction to improve extraction and tail gas treatment efficiency

“…In conventional SVE experiments, the variation of extraction efficiency under different conditions (organic matter content, water content, extraction rate) was discussed, and it was proved that the three factors all have different effects on the extraction efficiency, which is basically consistent with some recent research conclusions 9 , 11 , 13 . Labianca et al 9 conducted a full scale SVE remediation and proved that soil texture affects air rate and vapor movement through the ground and, subsequently, the total VOC removal. Qin, et al 11 proved that soil texture, organic matter content, water content and air flow rate all have different degrees of influence on SVE efficiency, and the influence trend is consistent with this study.…”

A Review: Effects of air, water and land dumpsite on human health and analytical methods for determination of pollutants

“…Volatile and some semi-volatile organic compounds (VOCs and Semi-VOCs) can be eliminated from unsaturated soils by a cycle known as soil vapor extraction (SVE). SVE as an in situ tidy up measure permits contaminated soil to be remediated without unsettling influence or unearthing [25]. Soil vapor extraction (SVE) is an in situ unsaturated (vadose) zone soil remediation technology in which a vacuum is applied to the soil to induce the controlled progression of air and eliminate volatile and some semi-volatile contaminants from the soil.…”

Ecological Response in the Integrated Process of Biostimulation and Bioaugmentation of Diesel-Contaminated Soil

“…The sample in Container 5 was treated by adding the nutrients mentioned above and microbes, i.e., a biostimulation-bioaugmentation joint process, and thus marked as "N-B." At the end of 3,6,9,12,15,18,21,24, and 27 days, 5.0 g of soil samples were collected from 10 points at the superstratum and substratum from each treatment. We divided each sample into two parts, one of 2.5 g was stored at −20 • C for DNA extraction, and the other of 2.5 g was stored at 4.0 • C for diesel analysis.…”

“…Several methods are widely used for soil remediation, such as vapor treatment [11,12], chemical treatment [13,14], physical remediation [15][16][17] and bioremediation [18,19], etc. Among these, bioremediation techniques have drawn growing attention due to their cost-effectiveness and non-invasiveness [20][21][22][23][24].…”