Assessment and Remediation of Petroleum Contaminated Sites

By

Shaban Ibrahim¹, Mohamed Khallaf²

(1) Faculty of Scince, Cairo, Egypt (2) faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Cairo, Egypt

 Many petroleum industry sites have been contaminated from previous activities or become contaminated through accidental releases of hydrocarbons. These sites include old pits, onshore release sites of hydrocarbons, and places where oil slicks from offshore releases are blown onshore. In many cases, remediation will be required to restore the impacted area. Unfortunately, the complex pore structure and fluid transport pathways of soil can make remediation difficult. However, hydrocarbons can be found in various places. Most are trapped by capillary pressure as a discrete liquid phase within the soil’s pores. If a sufficient volume of hydrocarbons has been released, it can exist in separate, mobile phase that floats on the groundwater. Hydrocarbons can also be found as a vapor in air-saturated pores. Due to the complex distribution of contaminants in soil, a comprehensive site assessment should be carried out, to assess the potential impact to the human health and the environment before the optimum remediation process can be selected and properly implemented. Some of remediation processes are suitable for cleaning up contaminated soil or subsurface groundwater, while others are suitable for cleaning up contaminated shorelines. These processes vary significantly in how completely they remove the contaminants, in the time they require, and in their associated costs. Since the most of the remediation processes entail their own environmental hazards .