ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses land treatment, bioventing, bioassisted soil washing, in situ biodegradation, ex situ biodegradation, and the coupled processes of either in situ and ex situ biodegradation paired with electrokinetic soil processing. The natural in situ process of biodegradation is predicted to extend the time of remediation, but it is predicted to be the process of choice for remediation of carbon-based hazardous wastes when compared with the majority of competing remediation technologies. The costs of remediation may be increased further when using disturbed soil in ex situ technologies by inadvertent contamination of uncontaminated soils. The electrokinetic driving forces are distributed fairly evenly throughout the soil. The estimated cost of decontaminating soils containing hazardous mixed wastes are in the range of many billions of dollars when using currently approved technologies. Land treatment is one of the simplest and cheapest technologies for surface biodegradation of hazardous organic compounds.
