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Soil remediation, also known as soil washing, is a term that refers to various processes
designed to remove contaminants such as hydrocarbons (petroleum and fuel residues),
heavy metals, pesticides, cyanides, volatiles, creosote, and semi-volatiles from soil. Soil
remediation is needed to clean and maintain high quality standards of soil, water and air
that can consequently benefit commercial cultivation, and wild flora and fauna.
Treatment
Non-Treatment Options
http://www.soilutions.co.uk/services/soil-remediation/
means. The process uses bacterium (aerobic and anaerobic species), particularly
targeted to consume and break down hydrocarbons and other pollutants in soil. The
advantage of the process also lies in the fact that when contaminate is consumed all the
microbes die off. However, note that the process is more successful in soil that
maintains 70 degrees F of temperature with sporadic rain for optimal moisture. And for
into the PTU to evaporate hydrocarbon impurities and water. Here, polluted materials
are usually treated at temperatures of 650 F to 900 F, and then discharged from the
PTU into a cooling unit, which is either a mixer, or auger where water is added for
cooling and dust control. The treated material is then discharged from the cooling unit
via a conveying system, ready for testing, and subsequent recycling.
Air Sparging: In air sparging, large volumes of air are injected into a polluted soil
stratum to force the organic vapors outwards where they are typically treated by carbon
filtering. The actual time the process takes in treatment depends upon various factors
such as depth of the hydrocarbon pollution, the concentration level of contaminate, pH
factor of the soil, and permeability of the soil.
Environmental pollution is a major threat to our planet. Pollution of precious water supplies is
particularly important. Electric utilities, oil refineries, and chemical plants produce huge amounts of
contaminated wastewater each year. In agriculture, toxic levels of various elements pollute the
groundwater as a result of excessive fertilizer application (e.g., nitrates and phosphates), and
through leaching of naturally occurring trace elements in the soil after irrigation (e.g., selenium).
Pollution of both water and soil poses a significant hazard to human health.
Site specific applicability test: feasibility tests are necessary to develop before any
technology application. Phytoremediation also is subjected to this demand. The studies are
carried out at different experimental scale (see the scheme in figure below). Field test are
particularly important in the technology evaluation and experimentation.
Bacteria are the most nutritionally diverse of all organisms, meaning they can
eat almost anything. The Greater Victoria Composting Education Center.
Definitions
All of these terms apply to toxins that most animals cannot efficiently
eliminate from their bodies. The difference is the route through which the
organism is exposed to the toxin.
Bioconcentration occurs after exposure by respiration only, whether
through gills for a trout or lungs for a rabbit. A chemical bioconcentrates if
levels in an organism rise consistently due to breathing contaminated air or
water.
someone eat a single oyster. And while one good-sized trout may be enough
for today, an otter or bear will want more tomorrow. As a result, levels in
higher carnivores and omnivores (humans, for instance) can again be
thousands of times higher than those in the surrounding environment.
A number of heavy metals, as well as a whole raft of complex organic
compounds such as DDT, dioxins and persistent organic pollutants (POPs)
such as PAHs and PCBs, all fall into this class of chemicals. Removing them
from our soils and waters is a high priority. Compost can help do this.
The most unlikely plants turn out to tolerate and to lift toxins out of the soil.
The lowly alpine pennycress (Thlaspi caerulescens), whose habitat includes
several European countries and a wide swath of western North America, is
one of these. It can absorb high levels of cadmium and zinc without suffering
from phytotoxicity (damage through toxins).
Both of those examples involve the application of compost to soil. But some
contaminants can actually be broken down by the composting process itself.
To the uninitiated (i.e., most of us), this sounds even more unlikely. Who
would guess that composting could directly transform 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene,
which most of us know as the explosive TNT, into less toxic minerals? Yet this
is so well established that scientists are testing not whether it is possible but
which composting method does the job best. A study published in 2004
found that compost started with a long anaerobic period degraded TNT more
completely than did compost that was constantly aerated.
Over several decades, General Electric dumped an estimated 1.3 million pounds of
PCBs into the Hudson from its manufacturing plants at Hudson Falls and Fort Edward.
Dumping ceased in 1977 and 197 miles of the river were declared a Superfund site in
1983. Ensuing legal battles dragged on so long that General Electric will only begin
dredging out the contaminated soil in the spring of 2009.
PCBs, like dioxins, DDT and others, are persistent organic pollutants or POPs.
POPs rate as some of the worlds most toxic and troublesome pollutants, for
reasons explained in part by their name. They persist in the environment for
a very long time, resisting most natural degradation processes. Yet
vermicompost, which has a very high level of microbial activity, effectively
remediates POP-contaminated soils, reducing them to their constituent and
less dangerous pieces and parts.
The health problems caused by POPs are many and serious. In A Global
Issue, a Global Response, the EPA reports that In people, reproductive,
developmental, behavioral, neurologic, endocrine, and immunologic adverse
health effects have been linked to POPs. The language is cautious but the
list long. The World Bank puts it more poetically, if more bluntly: They
[POPs] are highly toxic, causing an array of adverse effects, notably death,
disease, and birth defects among humans and animals. This source then
goes on to list some of those adverse effects: cancer, allergies and
hypersensitivity, damage to the central and peripheral nervous systems,
reproductive disorders, and disruption of the immune system.
Persistent means that these chemicals are extraordinarily stable. It also
means that they tend to accumulate in both animals and humans because
most organisms can neither eliminate or break them down. In other words,
they usually bioconcentration, bioaccumulation and biomagnification. As a
result, in fatty tissue, POP concentrations can become magnified by up to
70,000 times the background levels. (See What are POPs? The World
Bank.)
Two of the chemical groups classed as POPs PAHs (polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons) and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) are objects of
particular concern.
PAHs, naturally present in most fats and oils, are produced by a wide array
of chemical processes. Theyre also produced whenever an organic
substance wood, coal, tar, tobacco, gasoline, kerosene, cotton, wool,
paper burns incompletely. Theyre in the charred material that builds up
on the inside of the grill and the charred material on the steak that comes off
the grill. Theyre probably whats behind the commonly repeated truth that
char-broiled meats are carcinogenic. They are also found in all fossil fuels as
well as in some edible fats and oils. Many PAHs cause cancer or birth defects.
PCBs had wide industrial use in the decades after WWII, especially in the
electrical industry, despite having been recognized as extremely toxic as
early as 1937. Manufactured in the U.S. solely by Monsanto, they entered the
environment through manufacturing pollution and routine if irresponsible
disposal as well as through numerous spills and accidents. Though they were
banned in the US in the 1970s and are increasingly restricted around the
world, theyre still found in rivers, lakes and soils where they leaked or were
dumped.
The point about composts and vermicomposts is that they support such a
rich, varied and robust range and quantity of microbes, fungi and other
organisms. Instead of trying to refine and purify a particular strain of microbe
to tackle a particular pollutant, scientists in some areas are relying more and
more on the sheer diversity of microbes in compost to do the work. Put this
non-specific mix of microbes in contact with contaminated soil or water and
the microbe capable of digesting the contamination will proliferate, digesting
the pollutant.
This approach makes especially good sense when we consider that very few
sites are in fact polluted with only one thing, and that the chemical stew in
one place is unlikely to be reproduced anywhere else. In other words,
tailoring a treatment to a site would be expensive and time-consuming.
There are places for such tailoring, but in many cases its quicker, cheaper
and more efficient to just use compost.
http://www.planetnatural.com/composter-connection/environmental-issues/water-soil-remediation/
separate-phase petroleum product and vapors from the subsurface. The system
lowers the water table around the well, exposing more of the formation for vapor
extraction.
Nanoscale Materials for Environmental Site Remediation have been
developed and used to remediate contaminated soil and groundwater, such as sites
contaminated by chlorinated solvents or oil spills. Nanoscale materials can be highly
reactive in part because of the large surface area to volume ratio and the presence
of a larger number of reactive sites.
Natural Attenuation relies on natural processes to clean up or attenuate pollution
in soil and groundwater. Natural attenuation occurs at most polluted sites. However,
the right conditions must exist underground to clean sites properly.
Remediation Optimization uses defined approaches to improve the effectiveness
and efficiency of an environmental remedy. Optimization approaches include sitewide optimization reviews, statistical evaluation tools, consideration of emerging
technologies, review of operating system costs and the identification of cost
reduction methods without loss of protectiveness.
Permeable Reactive Barriers are subsurface emplacements of reactive materials
through which a dissolved contaminant plume must move as it flows, typically
under natural gradient. Treated water exits the other side of the permeable reactive
barrier.
Phytotechnologies are broadly defined as the use of vegetation to address
contaminants in soil, sediment, surface water and groundwater. Cleanup objectives
for phytotechnologies can be contaminant removal and destruction, control and
containment or both.
Soil Washing separates contaminants sorbed onto fine soil particles from bulk soil
in a water-based system based on particle size. Soils and wash water are mixed in a
tank or other treatment unit and usually separated using gravity settling.
Soil Vapor Extraction applies a vacuum to unsaturated zone soil to induce the
controlled flow of air and remove volatile and some semivolatile organic
contaminants from the soil.
Solidification encapsulates waste to form a solid material, coat the waste with lowpermeability materials to restrict contaminant migration or both. Solidification can
be accomplished by mechanical processes or by a chemical reaction between a
waste and binding reagents, such as cement, kiln dust, or lime/fly ash.
Solvent Extraction uses an organic solvent to separate organic and metal
contaminants from soil. The solvent is mixed with contaminated soil in an extraction
unit and then passed through a separator, where the contaminants and extractant
are separated from the soil.
Ex Situ Thermal Treatment generally involves the destruction or removal of
contaminants through exposure to high temperature in treatment cells, combustion
chambers or other means. Contaminated media is contained during the remediation
process.
place and almost every state offers a variety of testing some of which may make
more sense for your situation. For example we tend toward the testing done at
University of Massachusetts which always looks at lead levels given
Greensgrows location. You might want to have a test run for salinity or organic
matter if you feel confident in your soils safe but feel the garden is not
delivering the punch it once did to your basil.
If you have issues with your soil, growing above ground in raised beds is always
an option as is growing in an assortment of everything from old sneakers (talk
about contaminated) to unused kiddie pools. Dont try to take on remediation
yourself unless you have a strong back, deep scientific and financial resources
and a way of removing the soil that is there. Moving your problem to someone
elses yard is not the answer. Leave that to the professionals who have multiple
technologies available to them-including phytoremediation -ironically the use of
plants to pull the contaminants out of the soil, restructure them and release
them into the air.
Cleanup or remediation is analyzed by environmental scientists who utilize field
measurement of soil chemicals and also apply computer models for analyzing
transport and fate of soil chemicals. There are several principal strategies for
remediation:
Excavate soil and take it to a disposal site away from ready pathways for
human or sensitive ecosystem contact. This technique also applies to dredging
of bay muds containing toxins.
Aeration of soils at the contaminated site (with attendant risk of creating
air pollution)
Thermal remediation by introduction of heat to raise subsurface
temperatures sufficiently high to volatilize chemical contaminants out of the soil
for vapour extraction. Technologies include ISTD, electrical resistance heating
(ERH), and ET-DSPtm.
Bioremediation, involving microbial digestion of certain organic chemicals.
Techniques used in bioremediation include landfarming, biostimulation and bioaugmentating soil biota with commercially available microflora.
Extraction of groundwater or soil vapor with an active electromechanical
system, with subsequent stripping of the contaminants from the extract.
Containment of the soil contaminants (such as by capping or paving over
in place).
Phytoremediation, or using plants (such as willow) to extract heavy metals
http://www.greensgrow.org/nursery/urban-gardening/soil-contaminationremediation/#sthash.uRnLn1wU.dpuf
http://www.greensgrow.org/nursery/urban-gardening/soil-contaminationremediation/