Behaviour of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in stabilised and solidified contaminated soil

Shirani, Arrash 2011. Behaviour of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in stabilised and solidified contaminated soil. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University.

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Abstract

In recent years the UK has seen a rise in interest in the redevelopment and management of brownfield and contaminated land. Stabilisation/Solidification (S/S) is a technology that has been used in the UK to treat contaminated soils and wastes. It relies on contaminants being chemically and/or physically immobilised within the treated material, not destroyed or removed. There is therefore a great deal of interest in the long term durability and behaviour of such materials. This thesis aims to investigate some factors related to the longer term behaviour of organic contaminants within S/S matrices. A contaminated soil was treated using two common S/S binders ordinary Portland cement (OPC) and pulverised fly ash (PFA). Experiments were conducted to investigate the behaviour of the treated material. Modified tank leaching tests were carried out to investigate the release of petroleum hydrocarbon compounds from the material. The effects of test time, leaching solution and sample volume to surface area ratio (V/SA) were also investigated. 0.154 % of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and 0.113 % of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) were observed to have leached from the sample after 408 days. The fraction of PAH and TPH leached from the sample was found to correlate well with V/SA. Significantly less PAH and TPH were released when Cardiff tap water was used as the leaching solution when compared to deionised water (for example between 84.2 % and 91.3 % reduction in leaching for the 16 PAH compounds). Further work was carried out to investigate the adsorption of selected PAH compounds to several PFA samples in batch adsorption tests. The kinetics of adsorption was found to be fast (typically over 80 % of adsorption occurs with the first 30 minutes of testing). The adsorption capacity of the PFA samples was found to have good correlation with the sample carbon content (R2 values ranged from 0.918 to 0.987 for acenaphthene adsorption). However, differences were noted for the PFAs from different sources possibly due to different types of organic carbon in the PFA and its availability to the PAH compounds.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Engineering
Subjects:	T Technology > TD Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering
ISBN:	9781303222351
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Last Modified:	19 Mar 2016 23:31
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/55081

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