Abstract
In 1997, total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) remediation started at a former Air Force Base, which operated from 1940 to 1991. TPH had been released to soil and groundwater at the site by military activities. The TPH was 70% jet fuel and the affected area covered 28 ha. Remediation involved a combination of technologies, including removal of volatile organic compounds using soil vapor extraction and air sparging, free product vacuum recovery and aerobic biodegradation of organics with oxygen supplied by the air sparging system, along with nutrient addition. The primary remedial method was found to be biodegradation, which has removed 93% of the contaminants from the site to date. A significant aspect of the remedial action was performance monitoring, including documentation of remediation efficiency. The goal of the research was to assess the relative accuracy of methods commonly used for monitoring in situ TPH remediation. Two such methods were selected for the research: monitoring change in soil TPH concentration (specified as non-polar extractable substances) and monitoring respiration activity in soil with a subsequent stoichiometric mass balance to estimate the mass of TPH destroyed. The study demonstrated that both of the methods provided comparable results regarding the effectiveness of in situ TPH remediation, despite the fact that their methodologies are very different.
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Acknowledgements
The remediation project was funded by the Czech state budget under control of The Czech Ministry of Environment. Scientific research was performed within the EU Sixth Framework Program, priority 6. Project nr. 003998, BIOTOOL.
We thank to project managers of the clean-up project Stanislava Proksova and Ferdinand Hercik for participation in soil data evaluation and soil sampling methods development and to the team performing field measurements and soil sampling under supervision of Ales Fadrhons. Especially we thank to Jan Vitecek for providing of maps and other graphics. All people mentioned above are employees of Earth Tech CZ. Further we thank to William DiGiuseppi, James Hatton and Matthew Booth, who are employed in EarthTech USA, for reviewing and commenting on the paper.
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Machackova, J., Wittlingerova, Z., Vlk, K. et al. Comparison of Two Methods for Assessment of In Situ Jet-fuel Remediation Efficiency. Water Air Soil Pollut 187, 181–194 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-007-9507-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-007-9507-9