Washing techniques as an alternative to incineration
- Oak Ridge National Lab., Grand Junction, CO (United States). Health Science Research Div.
- Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States). Chemical Technology Div.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) best demonstrated available technology under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) for many hazardous wastes is incineration. However, public pressure has caused state and federal regulators to consider tightening emission standards on incineration units. Accordingly, the US Department of Energy (DOE) Environmental Management (EM) and the Office of Technology Development are exploring alternatives to incineration to remediate the large amounts of existing hazardous and mixed waste. The purpose of this paper is to review washing technologies as an alternative to incineration. Soil washing is the extraction of contaminants from excavated soil by mixing the soil with water, solvents, surfactants, or chelating agents. Soil washing is a combination of physical and chemical treatments performed on soil in an aqueous solution. It is often used as a size segregation technique for washing fines from coarse soil. The process removes contaminants that reside in specific grain-size domains, separates the waste stream into ``cuts``, and focuses on treatment appropriate to the contaminant/grain-size relationship. Usually, heavily contaminated soils are treated several times in a multistage counter-current system. Contaminated water or solution generated during the soil washing process is treated for removal of contaminants. Current soil washing extraction solutions range from alkaline mixtures of ionic and nonionic surfactants and bioremediating agents to acid rinses. Additionally, washing processes may provide added benefit for treatment of low-level mixed waste debris through application of the debris rule.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-84OR21400
- OSTI ID:
- 52798
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-950216-121; ON: DE95010217; TRN: 95:011851
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Waste management `95, Tucson, AZ (United States), 26 Feb - 2 Mar 1995; Other Information: PBD: [1995]
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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