Remediation of Soil and Groundwater using Thermal Treatment Technologies

土壤和地下水受到有机化学品的污染，如氯化溶剂、燃料、煤焦油、杂酚油、多氯联苯（多氯联苯）以及全氟烷基和多氟烷基物质（PFAS），在加拿大和全世界的工业化地区都很常见。鉴于这些有机化学品的毒性、持久性和普遍性，迫切需要开发更有效的处理策略和技术。这项拟议中的研究将直接造福加拿大的工业、政府和土地所有者，他们在受这些有机化学品影响的地点负有环境责任。一种有前途的土壤和地下水修复技术是热处理技术，包括导热加热和电阻加热。尽管热处理技术对某些类型的有机化合物显示出了希望，但在具有挑战性的地质环境中，如渗透率高非均质性、地下水流速高、多组分污染物组成等，挥发性和半挥发性化合物的应用还需要改进。拟议的研究将由研究生驱动，这将为加拿大提供能够应对这些具有挑战性的条件的高素质人才（HQP）。拟议的研究将支持10 HQP。拟议的研究将包括实验室实验和数值模拟。实验室实验将建立在申请人之前28年进行污染物实验室实验的经验基础上，包括之前12年进行涉及土壤和地下水热处理的实验室实验的经验。数值模拟将包括通过增加热迁移和气体运动来扩展当前三维高分辨率建模能力。拟议的实验室实验将检验假设并为数值模型验证提供数据集。所提出的数值模拟将解决现场尺度的领域，这是很难运行物理实验，考虑到与实施热技术相关的费用。所提出的研究的总体目标是提高热处理技术的有效性，为操作人员提供实时收集的关键数据信息，以优化现场操作，并为热处理技术的安全操作提供指导，从而避免污染的空间范围加剧。

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.