Design and optimization of surfactant based enhanced remediation of bunker C fuel oil contaminated soil

• Main Author: Zubair, Abdulrazaq
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Memorial University of Newfoundland 2015
• Subjects: Newfoundland; Canada
• Online Access: https://research.library.mun.ca/11640/; https://research.library.mun.ca/11640/1/thesis.pdf

Soil pollution, particularly by petroleum compounds is a very important global issue. It is typically a result of improper storage and disposal, historic careless spills, accidental spills, and leaks from tanks. This environmental damage can result in wide spread groundwater and surface water contamination, and limit soil use for agricultural purposes. There are a large number of brownfield sites across Canada. These are sites that have been previously used for industrial and commercial activities and have been contaminated with hazardous wastes. Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) in particular, has numerous sites due to a legacy of fuel oil use for power generation at abandoned, old and emerging mining fields. Data from the federal contaminated site inventory indicate that on federal owned sites in NL, there are over 3000 m³ of oil-contaminated soil. It has therefore become necessary to develop remediation technologies that are economically and technically feasible, environmentally friendly, fast, and applicable in a wide range of physical settings. A wide range of technologies have been developed over the past few decades for the remediation of contaminated sites. Some of these processes have been found to be successful in removing only a specific group of contaminants from the soil. As a result, combinations of different approaches are usually adopted for more effective remediation thereby leading to more expensive remedial operations. Surfactant-enhanced remediation technology, otherwise known as soil washing has proven to be an effective method to remove a mixture of contaminants such as heavy metals, petroleum compounds, volatile organic compounds, pesticides and herbicides as well as other hazardous and non-degradable substances from contaminated soils. Surfactant remediation relies on the ability of surfactant formulations to remove both organic and inorganic contaminants from soil and sediments by desorbing them from the solid to liquid phase. The technology removes contaminants via two mechanisms; one ...