Investigating hydrocarbon contamination using ground penetrating radar
- MAP Environmental Research BV, Arnhem (Netherlands)
The increasing costs of remediating contaminated sites has stimulated research for cost reducing techniques in soil investigation and clean-up techniques. Under the traditional approach soil borings and groundwater wells are used to investigate contaminated soil. These are useful tools to determine the amount and characteristics of the contamination, but they are inefficient and costly in providing information on the location and extent of contamination as they only give information on one point. This often leads to uncertainty in estimating clean-up costs or, even worse, to unsuccessful clean-ups. MAP Environmental Research has developed a technology using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) in combination with in-house developed software to locate and define the extent of hydrocarbon contamination. With this technology, the quality of site investigation is increased while costs are reduced. Since 1994 MAP has been improving its technology and has applied it to over 100 projects, which all have been checked afterwards by conventional drilling. This paper gives some general characteristics of the method and presents a case study. The emphasis of this paper lies on the practical application of GPR to hydrocarbon contamination detection.
- OSTI ID:
- 488844
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9610152-; TRN: 97:011407
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 17. Superfund hazardous waste conference, Washington, DC (United States), 15-17 Oct 1996; Other Information: PBD: 1996; Related Information: Is Part Of Hazwaste world, Superfund XVII: Conference proceedings; PB: 879 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Ground Penetrating Radar in Hydrogeophysics
Seismic-reflection and ground penetrating radar for environmental site characterization. 1998 annual progress report