EXPERIMENTAL SETUP FOR THE STUDY OF SOIL VAPOR EXTRACTION - A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO DETERMINE SORPTION EFFECT

Soil Vapor Extraction is one of the most used in situ technologies for the removal of volatile contaminants from the vadose zone. Developmen t of mathematical models and validation with field results has improve d the understanding of processes occurring during remediation. One of the most important is the transport of the contaminants from the diffe rent phases present in the soil to the gaseous one which is governed b y thermodynamic and kinetic laws. In this work, the analysis of the re sponse curves to Dirac pulses in soil columns for the determination of both the thermodynamic and kinetic parameters is,considered. Results obtained for sand columns with typical gasoline and solvent compounds are presented. This analytical technique does not require long periods of time, is sensitive to relatively low partition coefficients, and r eproduces closely the actual soil conditions so any kinetic limitation s that may appear during operation should be observable in these exper iments. (C) 1998 IAWQ. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.