Soil remediation
Soil contamination in industrial sites represents a living matter in all the industrialized countries. The contamination mainly arises from wrong plant management procedure or incidental events which may have taken place several decades before the actual revealation of the environmental damage, which often involves both soil and groundwater.
Current remediation techniques are extremely invasive and expensive, and are often incompatible with the prosecution of industral activities.
Main projects
Study of the thermal desorption of hydrocarbons from contaminated soils with microwave heating
- Lab-testing with moist soil samples contaminated with different hydrocarbons; measure of the temperature and of the removal efficiency in different operating conditions
- Modeling of the heating and desorption process
- Technic and economical assessment of the on site treatment with microwaves
Heavy metals removal from soil with EDTA washing
- Washing tests for heavy metals contaminated samples with ethylendiamminictetraacetic acid (EDTA) at different operating conditions
- Heavy metals removal efficiency determination
- Testing EDTA recovery through acidification and precipitation
Feasibility study for the remediation of a contaminated industrial site with in situ radiofrequency heating
- Analysis of the historic data
- Modeling of the heating process through radiofrequency irradiation with submerged antennas
- Pilot test design
- Preliminar evaluation of the treatment cost
Decontamination of marine sediment through in situ radiofrequency irradiation (Progetto T.O.S.C.A.)
- Mineralogic, thermal, and chemical characterization of contaminated marine sediments
- Microwave assisted decontamination of marine sediments lab-testing
- Design and realization of a pilot test with 5 m3 of sediments
- Design and management of a dimostrative test on industrial scale with monitoring of the main operating parameters
