Remediation of sandy soils contaminated with hydrocarbons and halogenated hydrocarbons by soil vapour extraction

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2012

Authors

José Tomás Albergaria (Author) Other; Maria da Conceição M. Alvim Ferraz (Author) FEUP; Cristina Delerue Matos (Author) Other

Journal

Title: Journal of Environmental Management

Vol. 104

Pages: 195-201

ISSN: 0301-4797

Publisher: Elsevier

Indexing

ISI Web of Science

Scopus

Associated Projects

PTDC/ECM/68056/2006 - Remediação de solos contaminados combinando a extracção de vapor e processos biológicos: previsão de tempo de remediação e eficiência

Other information

DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2012.03.033

Abstract (EN): This paper presents the study of the remediation of sandy soils containing six of the most common contaminants (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene, trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene) using soil vapour extraction (SVE). The influence of soil water content on the process efficiency was evaluated considering the soil type and the contaminant. For artificially contaminated soils with negligible clay contents and natural organic matter it was concluded that: (i) all the remediation processes presented efficiencies above 92%; (ii) an increase of the soil water content led to a more time-consuming remediation; (iii) longer remediation periods were observed for contaminants with lower vapour pressures and lower water solubilities due to mass transfer limitations. Based on these results an easy and relatively fast procedure was developed for the prediction of the remediation times of real soils; 83% of the remediation times were predicted with relative deviations below 14%.

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 7