Emergency Response Equipment to Clean Up Hazardous Chemical Releases at Spills and Uncontrolled Waste Sites

摘要

This paper reviews some of the research activities of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding the development of emergency response equipment to control hazardous chemical releases. Several devices and systems have been developed by EPA for environmental emergencies involving spills and uncontrolled waste sites. Many of these have already been made available commercially by industry, including a mobile physical/chemical treatment system for processing contaminated water at hazardous incidents and a mobile laboratory for on-site chemical analyses. Other operationally-ready devices addressed in this paper include: a mobile stream diversion system for isolating segments of small streams to facilitate the removal of contaminated sediments; a portable backpack polyurethane foam diking system for the containment of spilled chemicals; and an acoustic emission-based spill alert device for detecting imminent dike failure at lagoons containing toxic and hazardous wastes. Prototypical equipment, described in this paper, which are now undergoing shakedown testing and evaluation include: a mobile soils washing system for extracting spilled materials from excavated soils on site; and a mobile, field-use incineration system for the thermal destruction of toxic organic compounds.