Soil Remediation
Hydrocarbon soil contamination is a global, environmental problem. While major oil spills from refinery explosions and pipeline leaks garner greater attention, smaller spills around production wellheads and storage tanks still require cleanup to uphold environmental safety standards expected by shareholders and local communities.
Methods to remediate hydrocarbon-contaminated soil include incineration and replacement, bioremediation, and soil washing. The method chosen depends on such factors as: urgency; size of contaminated area; types of hydrocarbons present; soil properties; water availability; and overall cost to clean. Technologies that can quickly treat soils with a wide variety of hydrocarbon contamination are especially desirable.
Bioremediation is often chosen because of the non-invasive nature of treatment and its efficacy. Soil microbes can be augmented with hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria that utilize hydrocarbons as energy and nutrient sources. Indigenous plants work to decompose hydrocarbons through their root systems.
Regain Environmental Safety with Innovative In-Situ Soil Remediation
Remediate Soil Treatment Program
Hydrocarbon Dynamics offers an environmentally safe and effective program for in-situ remediation of contaminated soil in the production, transmission, and storage of crude oil. Its Remediate™ soil treatment program for environmentally safe soil remediation is a specialized service that incorporates several products acting synergistically to resolve the contamination efficiently and effectively.
The Remediate soil treatment program begins with an application of Hydrocarbon Dynamics’ proprietary HCD Cleanup technology. This non-toxic, environmentally safe chemistry has a unique ability to liquefy, in situ, crude oil paraffin wax, asphaltenes and large hydrocarbon molecules typically seen at an oil spill site.
Following liquefication of the hydrocarbon aggregates, HCD Cleanup chemistry takes advantage of the extreme hydrophobic nature of hydrocarbons to break oil-in-water emulsions. In doing so, the hydrocarbon will separate from water. This allows the removal of large hydrocarbon residues that may be visible, present, lost, or active in the water phase utilizing methods specific for the spill area site.
After application of HCD Cleanup chemistry, the next steps include chelating residual salt deposits, and degrading remaining hydrocarbon molecules in an environmentally safe manner.
After the removal of large hydrocarbon deposits, Hydrocarbon Dynamics technical experts may recommend the use of HCD Soil Enhancer chemistry to chelate salt deposits that are residual and harmful to healthy environments and plant growth.
The effective chelation of salts using HCD Soil Enhancer chemistry may be advantageous to reforming plant growth, as these chelated salts may be used by plants as food and allow for increased soil porosity. This can help promote rapid growth of plant roots in the spill area to aid in the cleanup.
Difficult-to-reach hydrocarbons may be remediated in distressed soils through the application of HCD MicroPhase microbial blend. This is a mix of environmentally safe bacteria that reduce hydrocarbon viscosity in the soil by using the hydrocarbon as an energy and nutrient source, giving off harmless byproducts of carbon dioxide and water. In doing so, this further cleans the soil in situ. HCD MicroPhase microbial blend is environmentally safe and not affected adversely by HCD Cleanup chemistry.
A combination of HCD Cleanup chemistry and HCD MicroPhase microbial blend allows difficult-to-access, complex hydrocarbons to be broken down and liquefied into smaller hydrocarbons. These are then easily treated by the HCD MicroPhase bacteria. Any groundwater or standing water will not be affected during this cleanup due to the hydrophobic and environmentally friendly nature of the chemistries used.
Deep soil contamination by hydrocarbons may be problematic to reach using Hydrocarbon Dynamics’ core chemistries for emulsion breaking, salt chelation and hydrocarbon degradation. In these cases, HCD Ozone chemistry may be applied. This is an application of ozone by “soil-lancing”. Specialized soil lances allow for the physical application of ozone to help break up difficult-to-reach, complex hydrocarbons.
This may be an effective solution for water tables that are distressed by oil spills. The soil, once sterilized by ozone, will be treated with HCD Soil Enhancer chemistry and HCD MicroPhase microbial blend to help repopulate soil with friendly microbes, increase soil porosity and create a healthy soil for crop or grass growth.
