ABSTRACT
I. Summary................................................................................................................ 347 II. The Problem .......................................................................................................... 348 III. The Approach ........................................................................................................ 350 IV. Surfactant Fundamentals ....................................................................................... 351
A. Key Economic/Technical Factors.............................................................. 353 1. Minimizing Surfactant Losses ................................................... 354 2. Maximizing Contaminant Extraction ........................................ 354 3. Surfactant Regeneration/Reuse .................................................. 355 4. Mitigating Vertical Migration Concerns.................................... 356
B. Field Results.............................................................................................. 358 1. Hill Air Force Base (AFB)—Maximizing Contaminant
Extraction ................................................................................... 358 2. Tinker AFB-Surfactant Decontamination for Reinjection...... 361 3. Alameda Point NAS-Mitigating Vertical Migration
(Supersolubilization) .................................................................. 362 C. Future Advances/Applications .................................................................. 364
Acknowledgments........................................................................................................... 366 References ....................................................................................................................... 366
I. SUMMARY
Widespread use of petroleum hydrocarbons and chlorinated solvents has resulted in their contamination of valuable ground water supplies. This chapter summarizes key technical and economic issues for surfactant-enhanced remediation of such contamination episodes.
The major issues considered include: maximizing the amount of contaminant extracted by surfactant injection, minimizing the surfactant losses in the subsurface, mitigating concerns of vertical contaminant migration, and decontaminating and recycling the surfactant solutions. Both laboratory and field results are presented to demonstrate how we address each of these issues. Finally, we will discuss recent innovations in surfactant systems to further improve the economics of subsurface remediation efforts, and describe how these systems may be useful in other applications (e.g., detergency, solvent replacement).
