Use of Haz-Flote to Efficiently Remove Mercury from Contaminated Materials

摘要

There are thousands of known contaminated sites in the United Stated, including Superfund sites (1500 to 2100 sites), RCRA corrective action sites (1500 to 3500 sites), underground storage tanks (295,000 sites), U.S. Department of Defense sites (7300 sites), U.S. Department of Energy sites (4,000 sites), mining refuse piles, and numerous other hazardous metals and organic contamination sites. Only a small percentage of these sites has been cleaned up. The development of innovative technologies to handle the various clean-up problems on a national and international scale is commonplace. Many innovative technologies have been developed that can be used to effectively remediate contaminated materials. Unfortunately, many of these technologies are only effective for materials coarser than approximately 200 mesh. In addition, these technologies usually require considerable investment in equipment, and the clean-up costs of soil material are relatively high - in excess of $100 to $500 per yd(sup 3). These costs result from the elaborate nature of the processes, the costs for power, and the chemical cost. The fine materials are disposed of or treated at considerable costs. As a result, the costs often associated with amelioration of contaminated sites are high. Western Research institute is in the process of developing an innovative soil washing technology that addresses the removal of contaminants from the fine size-fraction materials located at many of the contaminated sites. This technology has numerous advantages over the other ex-situ soil washing techniques. It requires a low capital investment, low operating costs and results in high levels of re-emplacement of the cleaned material on site. The process has the capability to clean the fine fraction (