Remediation Performance of Petroleum Polluted Groundwater by in Site Air Sparging Technologies

Abstract

The technology of in situ air sparging (IAS) was used to remediate the groundwater polluted by petroleum hydrocarbon in an oil field. The results show that the soil geological condition has great influence on the injection air pathways distribution, and the pattern of the air pathways distribution is nonsymmetrical to the injection well as the vertical axis. The petroleum hydrocarbon removal rate reached to 70% in the zone with higher density of air pathways distribution, but only 40% in the zone with lower density of air pathways distribution, and the average removal rates of the petroleum hydrocarbon components reached to 60 % in the influence zone. The petroleum components with higher volatility are easily removed by volatilization, but those with lower volatility are difficult to remove, so a tailing effect of lingering residual contaminant exist when the technology is used to remediate groundwater polluted by petroleum hydrocarbon.