PNNL

Abstract

Soil desiccation (drying) is recognized as a potentially robust vadose zone remediation process involving water evaporation induced by air injection and extraction. Desiccation has the potential to immobilize contaminants and could potentially improve access for other gas-phase treatments by reducing water saturation and therefore increasing sediment gas-phase permeability. Before this technology could be deployed in the field, concerns related to energy limitations, osmotic effects, and potential contaminant remobilization after rewetting need to be addressed. A series of detailed wedge-shaped, intermediate-scale laboratory experiments in unsaturated homogeneous and simple heterogeneous systems was conducted to improve the understanding of the impact of energy balance issues on soil desiccation. The experiments were simulated with the multifluid flow simulator STOMP, using independently obtained hydraulic and thermal porous medium properties. In all the experiments, the injection of dry air proved to be an effective means for removing essentially all moisture from the test media. Evaporative cooling was observed which generally decreased with increased distance from the gas inlet chamber. Observations of temperature in fine-grained sands in the heterogeneous systems show two local temperature minima associated with the cooling. The first one occurs because of evaporation in the adjacent medium-grained sand whereas the second minimum is attributed to evaporative cooling in the fine-grained sand itself. Results of the laboratory tests were simulated accurately when thermal properties of the flow cell walls and insulation material were taken into account, indicating that the proper physics were incorporated into the simulator.