The Science of Soil Vapor Evaporation

Submitted By: Michael Bryksa

Environmental remediation is nothing new to the scientific scene. Fact is it's been around for some time. But very few people around the world actually knows what environmental remediation is, what it does, and what it aims to do for the planet in the long run.

Let's get started...

Environmental remediation is a branch of science that deals with the removal—or remediation—of contaminants or pollutants from all sorts of environment media such as surface water, sediment, groundwater and soil for the benefit of human health and the general environment. Industrial redevelopment is going at such a fast pace and is starting to take a toll on everything else around it, including our health. Which is why environmental remediation is so important and should be given top priority worldwide.

Environmental remediation is still subject to regulatory requirements by the government.

One of the most effective but complex type of remediation technology is the soil vapor extraction. Like its name says, it is effective on and mostly used for soil. The technology "Multi Phase Extraction" or MPE falls under this category, which is effective for remediating both soil and groundwater when just soil vapor extraction itself is not as effective. Here are some other technologies that fall under soil vapor extraction:

1. Granular Activated Carbon
Granular Activated Carbon, or GAC, is a technology used as a filter for water and air. You can see this type of technology common in household sinks for filtering tap water. As you can imagine, granular activated carbon is an absorbent material that is highly porous and produced by heating coconut shell, wood or coal—basically organic material—in the absence of air and then crushed into fine granules.

Granular activated carbon is useful for filtering negative ions such as dissolved organic solutes, fluorides, chlorine, ozone and organic ions from drinking water. But it should be noted granular activated carbon isn't as effective in removing heavy metals.

2. Thermal Oxidation
Thermal Oxidation is also an effective remediation technology under soil vapor extraction. Also known as incineration, thermal oxidation is rather controversial due to the risk of releasing dioxins in the atmosphere from the exhaust gases produced during thermal oxidation.

Thermal oxidation uses two different systems for remediation:
a. Thermal oxidation for maintaining temperatures ranging from 730C to 815C
b. Catalytic oxidation for maintaining temperatures ranging from 315C to 430C

3. Vapor Condensation
Vapor Condensation is considered the most effective type of remediation for treating high concentration of VOC (>4,000 ppmV) vapor streams. It is an off-gas treatment and quite different from the previous two types of remediation. Vapor condensation is also known as C3-Technology (cryogenic cooling and compression).

There you go, the three most popular types of remediation methods under soil vapor extraction, a remediation technology used for treating contaminated soil. Environmental remediation is important for the welfare of the entire planet. So we should definitely make a move to know more about this branch of science and what we can do to make our contributions to this effort to clean the planet from the pollution we are responsible for in the first place.

Published At: Isnare.com