An assessment of remediation strategies for Kuwaiti oil lakes

Abstract

The Iraqi invasion of the state of Kuwait in 1990 inflicted one of the greatest environmental disasters, leading to a massive amount of soil becoming contaminated with oil, which has been left untreated in the deserts of Kuwait. The contaminated soil, if left untreated, has the tendency to pollute the underground watercourses as well as affect the well-being of the surrounding population. This research aims to evaluate and provide a review of the situation in relation to the oil lakes as well as understand the impact of contaminated soil on the environment of Kuwait, and therefore to find the best method of soil remediation. This work consists of two phases: the first phase summarises the results of a field survey and discusses the prospect of using different strategies for remediation of oil-contaminated soil in Kuwait, while the second phase assesses the feasibility of several soil remediation techniques in compliance with UN regulations. Soil washing was chosen to be the best alternative among ten remediation methods, based on a decision mechanism, in compliance with the House of Quality analysis system, as the results of evaluation of different methods gave the highest score of relative weight of about 18% for soil washing compared with other remediation methods.