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REMEDIATION FLUID RECYCLING - APPLICATION OF PERVAPORATION TECHNOLOGY TO MATERIAL RECOVERY AND REUSEI
Citation:
Vane*, L M., F R. Alvarez*, L Hitchens*, J. Springer Jr., AND E Giroux. REMEDIATION FLUID RECYCLING - APPLICATION OF PERVAPORATION TECHNOLOGY TO MATERIAL RECOVERY AND REUSEI. 2nd International Conf. of Remediation of Chlorinated and Recalcitrant Compounds, Monterey, CA, 5/22-25/2000.
Description:
In an effort to aggressively remove NAPL source areas, agents such as surfactants and alcohols have been added to in situ flusing systems to enhance the solubility of the NAPL components. Such an approach has the potential to reduce the risk posed by a long term source of groundwater contamination. Unfortunately, these agents can be costly and will have their own environmental impact through the manufacture and use of the material. In order to reduce both the expense and impact of using these agents, decontamination and material recovery technologies must be employed which can deliver a reusable product ? both from a regulatory and a technical standpoint ? in a cost-effective manner. Pervaporation is a membrane technology which may prove useful for remediation fluid recycling.
Since 1994, researchers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA) National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NRMRL) have been investigating the use of pervaporation to remove VOCs from surfactant solutions, recover alcohols from surfactant-based flushing solutions, and remove water from alcohol solutions. Bench and pilot-scale (up to 2 gpm) pervaporation experiments with laboratory-prepared and actual surfactant enhanced aquifer remediation (SEAR) solutions have shown that pervaporation can effectively remove volatile NAPLs, such as trichloroethylene, toluene, and tetrachloroethylene, from solutions of nonionic and anionic surfactants above and below the critical micelle concentrations of the surfactants. Pervaporation was selected because it does not suffer from foaming problems encountered when conventional separation processes such as air stripping, steam stripping, and vacuum extraction are used with surfactant solutions.