Abstract |
Soil vapor extraction (SVE) has been shown to be effective at removing hydrocarbons from the unsaturated zone. However, at many spill sites significant fractions of the mass are at or below the water table, in which case SVE is far less effective. To improve its efficiency in cases where gasoline is trapped below the water table, SVE can be used in conjunction with other techniques to get at that trapped mass. In the last few years the direct injection of air into the formation below the water table (i.e., in situ sparging) has become a popular technique. Another approach is to lower the water table to improve air flow in the vicinity of the trapped product. This can be accomplished either in the localized area of a groundwater drawndown cone or as the result of larger scale dewatering. In experiments conducted at the Oregon Graduate Institute (OGI), hydrocarbon spills into a large three-dimentional physical model filled with sand are being used to study the efficiencies of SVE combined with other techniques. Experiments to date have examined SVE operating as a stand-alone technique, as well as in conjunction with air sparging below the water table, dewatering of the 'smear zone' (i.e., where product is trapped as residual below the water table), and air injection into the dewatered smear zone. |