When is a soil remediated? Comparison of biopiled and windrowed soilscontaminated with bunker-fuel in a full-scale trial

摘要

A six month field scale study was carried out to compare windrow turning andbiopile techniques for the remediation of soil contaminated with bunker C fueloil. End-point clean-up targets were defined by human risk assessment andecotoxicological hazard assessment approaches. Replicate windrows and biopileswere amended with either nutrients and inocula, nutrients alone or no amendment.In addition to fractionated hydrocarbon analysis, culturable microbialcharacterisation and soil ecotoxicological assays were performed. Thisparticular soil, heavy in texture and historically contaminated with bunker fuelwas more effectively remediated by windrowing, but coarser textures may be moreamendable to biopiling. This trial reveals the benefit of developing risk andhazard based approaches in defining end-point bioremediation of heavyhydrocarbons when engineered biopile or windrow are proposed as treatmentoption. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.