Pilot testing of deep air sparging for remediation of TCE contaminated groundwater

Conference · Tue Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1996

OSTI ID:488826

Swingle, T P; Goldsmith, P M ^[1]; Schulman, S ^[2]

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1. Parsons Engineering Science, Inc., Winter Park, FL (United States)
2. CES/CEVR, Patrick AFB, FL (United States)

Air sparging has become a popular and successful method for remediating groundwater contaminated with various volatile and/or biodegradable contaminants. However, evaluation of air sparging has often been limited to shallow groundwater contamination, typically 25 feet or less below the groundwater table. The pilot test program described in this paper was developed to expand the application of air sparging to deeper contamination. In the case of the site that will be discussed, TCE contamination has been encountered at approximately 50 feet below groundwater, which is just above a clay confining layer. Since TCE can be very amenable to remediation by air sparging, the primary difficulty in the technology in this application is the challenges associated with implementation of a sparging system at this depth. The air sparging pilot test program developed for the site includes nested sparge wells, nested groundwater monitoring wells, a horizontal vapor extraction system, and soil gas monitoring points. The pilot system design also includes timer and pressure regulating controls to enable evaluation of multiple operating scenarios. These scenarios include testing of deep injection only, as well as multi-level air injection and various pulsing schemes between all of the injection wells. This variety of operational capabilities enables a thorough evaluation of the pilot system success and development of design parameters necessary to support full scale system design.

• OSTI ID: 488826
• Report Number(s): CONF-9610152--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
BIODEGRADATION
CHLORINATED ALIPHATIC HYDROCARBONS
FIELD TESTS
GROUND WATER
INJECTION WELLS
REMEDIAL ACTION
TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT