Remediation of aged hydrocarbon contaminated soil by washing in fluidized bed column

Abstract

showing the efficiency of the treatment, an important parameter was not taken into account, namely the aging effect (the contamination was processed 2 minutes before washing). In fact, weathering results in greater binding strength of crude oil to the soil as well as higher contaminants’ average molecular weight, viscosity, and density. Therefore, weathered contaminants are more difficult to remediate than recently contaminated soil (Urum et al. 2005). Several other studies had used fluidization as washing technique for soil remediation. Including but not limited to, thermal treatment using Nitrogen gas fluidization (Lee et al. 1999) or for enhancing the aeration for the biodegradation of diesel-oil contamination (Arrar et al. 2007).