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Traditionally, land treatment is simply the tilling of shallow lifts of contaminated soil to mix and aerate, thereby promoting biodegradation of the contamination. Control of soil moisture is usually required. This simple approach works well for easily biodegradable contaminants, such as fuels, and is inexpensive. The objective of NRMRL's Land Remediation and Pollution Control Division (LRPCD) project is to develop land treatment-like technologies to biotreat sediments and soils contaminated with more recalcitrant, hydrophobic contaminants (e.g., PAHs, PCP, PCBs, and DDT). Rapid and extensive biodegradation of these types of contaminants requires innovative operating strategies for and amendments to the traditional land treatment approach. In LRPCD, various amendments are evaluated for their ability to increase rate and extent of contaminant degradation by properly altering the land treatment environment. Small soil reactors were developed to simulate land treatment at bench scale and allow for the operation of many reactors in parallel. The most recent studies involve PAH-contaminated river sediments and soils from wood treating and town gas sites. The most encouraging of the amendments tested at bench scale were at EPA's Test and Evaluation Facility. Twenty-four temperature controlled reactors can be operated in parallel, each holding roughly 35 kg of soil. Recently, soil from the Reilly Tar and Chemical Superfund site, contaminated with PAHS from wood treating operations, was tested in these reactors. For more information about LRPCD's land treatment development program, visit the website at http://www.epa.gov/ORD/NRMRL/lrpcd/tdb/Research-Programs_files/land_factC.htm. To access directly from this website, click on downloads on the navigation bar.

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