Process Technology for Hazardous Waste Remediation — (KPEG^sm and Reductive Technologies)

Abstract

A number of technologies have been proposed and promoted for remediation of media contaminated with chlorinated hydrocarbons. While some of these approaches are flawed on first principles, potentially leading, for instance, to production of more hazardous substances, others lack a realistic engineering assessment of what an overall system embodying the chemistry would comprise.

Unlike untried technologies, alkaline glycolate dechlorination, commonly called KPEG^sm, has a long and successful history, having been extensively used in the destruction of PCB contaminated transformer oil. This chemistry has now been extended to solids and has been applied to the remediation of over 30,000 tons of PCB contaminated soil at the Wide Beach, NY Superfund site.

This paper will briefly review the history of KPEG^sm, and present experimental data on the complete dechlorination of chlorobenzene and trichlorobenzene as model compounds. The importance of complete dechlorination to project economics will be discussed and the significance of the Wide Beach Project to technology selection for PCB contaminated soils will be assessed.

The total cost of the national remediation effort is sufficiently large that economics, until now quite a minor factor in technology selection, must eventually become a key driving force. Based on this assumption and first principle arguments about efficacy and with non-quantifiable, but quite obvious public prejudices in mind, one can define the design basis of a cost-effective remediation process, where the term process is used in the usual context of the chemical industry. It is shown that the cost of processing in such a system is relatively bounded. Furthermore, the regime of applicability of KPEG^sm can be identified as can generic critical features of its integration with other technologies, for remediation of more complex wastes.