Treatability study for total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) contamination at gasoline-alley

摘要

This study discusses the biotreatability options for remediating total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) contaminated soils at Gasoline-Alley, Fort Drum, NY. The main objective of the study was to evaluate alternative bioremediation technologies for follow on full-scale remediation activities on the basis of intrinsic TPH degradation capability of native subsurface consortia. A two-phase treatability study comprised of microcosm evaluation using a single soil core, and a bench-scale column evaluation comparing natural attenuation (NA), bioventing (BV), and biosparging (BS), using three soil cores was performed. Microorganisms in soil samples from the smear zone (10.5 feet bgs) mineralized about 37 percent of ~(14)C-acetate to ~(14)CO_2 in 12 days. The extant microbiota taken from the top of the smear zone demonstrated the ability to mineralize ~(14)C-phenanthrene, utilizing oxygen from the headspace. NA and BV columns did not show any significant reduction in the total soil TPH as compared to BS columnwhich demonstrated a zero-order removal rate of 35.5 mg rTPH kg~(-1) contaminated soil d~(-1). On the basis of respiration analysis, biodegradation rates of 0.33 and 0.49 mg TPH kg~(-1) contaminated soil d~(-1) were achieved in BV and BS columns, respectively.