Remediation of Soil and Groundwater using Thermal Treatment Technologies

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Contamination of soil and groundwater by organic chemicals such as chlorinated solvents, fuels, coal tar, creosote, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) is common throughout industrialized areas of Canada and world-wide. The development of more effective treatment strategies and technologies for these organic chemicals represents an urgent need given their toxicity, persistence and ubiquity. The proposed research will directly benefit Canadian industries, governments and land owners who have environmental liabilities at sites impacted by these organic chemicals. One promising class of soil and groundwater remediation technologies is thermal treatment technologies which include thermal conductive heating and electrical resistance heating. Although thermal treatment technologies have shown promise for certain types of organic compounds, improvement is needed for application to both volatile and semi-volatile compounds in challenging geological settings such as high heterogeneity in permeability and high rates of groundwater flow, and multicomponent contaminant composition. The proposed research will be graduate student driven, which will provide Canada with highly qualified personnel (HQP) capable of addressing these challenging conditions. The proposed research will support 10 HQP. The proposed research will include both laboratory experimentation and numerical simulation. The laboratory experiments will build upon the applicant's prior 28 years of experience performing laboratory experiments with contaminants, including the prior 12 years of experience performing laboratory experiments involving thermal treatment of soil and groundwater. The numerical modelling will include expansion of current three-dimensional high resolution modelling capabilities by the addition of heat migration and gas movement. The proposed laboratory experiments will test hypotheses and provide data sets for numerical model validation. The proposed numerical modelling will address field-scale domains, which are difficult to run physical experiments in given the expense associated with implementing thermal technologies. The overall goal of the proposed research is to improve the effectiveness of thermal treatment technologies, provide operators with information regarding critical data to collect real-time to optimize field operations, and provide guidelines for the safe operation of thermal treatment technologies such that the spatial extent of contamination is not exacerbated.