ELECTROOSMOSIS TECHNOLOGY FOR SOIL REMEDIATION - LABORATORY RESULTS, FIELD TRIAL, AND ECONOMIC MODELING

Laboratory experiments have demonstrated electroosmosis to be very eff ective for removing a water-soluble organic from low-permeability silt y clay soil from a DuPont site in the eastern U.S. Concentrations were reduced below detection levels by electroosmotically driving 1.5 pore volumes of water through the soil. Neutralizing the fluid at the anod e with lime or sodium hydroxide significantly increased the efficiency of the process. An in-situ field trial is under way. A simple economi c analysis is presented, which estimates the cost of applying the tech nology for this application full-scale to be $78 m(-3) ($63 per cubic yard) for a three-year remediation project. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.