Thermal cleanups using dynamic underground stripping and hydrous pyrolysis oxidation

摘要

In the early 1990s, in collaboration with the School of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory developed dynamic underground stripping (DUS), a method for treating subsurface contaminants with heat that is much faster and more effective than traditional treatment methods. more recently, Livermore scientists developed hydrous pyrolysis/oxidation (HPO), which introduces both heat and oxygen to the subsurface to convert contaminants in the ground to such benign products as carbon dioxide, chloride ion, and water. This process has effectively destroyed all contaminants it encountered in laboratory tests. With dynamic underground stripping, the contaminants are vaporized and vacuumed out of the ground, leaving them still to be destroyed elsewhere. Hydrous pyrolysis/oxidation technology takes the cleanup process one step further by eliminating the treatment, handling, and disposal requirements and destroying the contamination in the ground. When used in combination, HPO is especially useful in the final polishing of a site containing significant free-product contaminant, once the majority of the contaminant has been removed.