Application of Soil Washing Treatment Method for the Remediation of Petroleum Polluted Soil

Abstract

The increasing contamination of soil by petroleum products has been a great source of concern to our society because of its negative consequences on the environment. Thus, several remediation technologies and trials have been propounded for a crude oil-polluted environment. This chapter reviews the dynamics of pollutants in the soil and the various treatment technologies for petroleum-polluted soils viz physico-chemical, thermal, and biological treatment methods. Authors experimented on soil washing using detergent for the remediation of petroleum contaminated soils considering different concentrations. The percentage removal of aliphatic and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) was determined using Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). The highest percentage removal efficiencies of 97.55% and 61.41% for aliphatic and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons were obtained at detergent concentration of 20w/v% respectively.