| Title |
A Study on the Movement of Petroleum Products in Contaminated Soil |
| Authors |
강선홍 ; 최상일 ( Seon Hong Kang ; Sang Il Choi ) |
| Abstract |
Prior studies at Iowa State University tend to indicate that petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel fuel, and crude oil can be removed from soil by bioremediation. These studies also indicate that gasoline would largely be removed by volatilization and that diesel fuel would not. In order to investigate volatilization as a competing process for the removal of fuels with bioremediation, the movement of gasoline in the sand was investigated and a model based on a material balance was developed to predict the evaporation of petroleum products from contaminated sand. The results show that the fuel was drying out from the top down and at the level where the liquid fuel is found, the air in the pore space in the sand is saturated with fuel vapor. Diffusion moves the vapor to the surface of the sand where the flow of air maintains the fuel vapor concentrations near zero. The model explains that the evaporation pressure is an important factor and why the rate of volatilization of gasoline is much higher than that of diesel fuel. |