Electroosmosis technology for soil remediation: laboratory results, field trial, and economic modeling

Laboratory experiments have demonstrated electroosmosis to be very effective for removing a water-soluble organic from low-permeability silty clay soil from a DuPont site in the eastern U.S. Concentrations were reduced below detection levels by electroosmotically driving 1.5 pore volumes of water through the soil. Neutralizing the fluid at the anode with lime or sodium hydroxide significantly increased the efficiency of the process. An in-situ field trial is under way. A simple economic analysis is presented, which estimates the cost of applying the technology for this application full-scale to be $78 m(-3) ($63 per cubic yard) for a three-year remediation project. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.