The effect of age on petroleum hydrocarbon contaminants in soil for bioventing remediation

An investigation was completed to determine the effects of petroleum contaminant aging in bioventing, a low cost and nondestructive in situ remediation method. Wet soil spiked with a known concentration of synthetic gasoline was aged in a refrigerator for 300 days and then subjected to degradation tests in 150 g respirometers and an 80 kg bioventing reactor. After aging, the 80 kg reactor had degradation rates that varied from to In the 150 g respirometer, the biodegradation rate increased from 0.079 to 0.194 Comparison with previously completed dry aged soils, where the biodegradation rate was measured to be 0.053 showed that microbial acclimatization during the wet aging process played a key factor in the experiments.