An effective response surface-based optimisation approach for soil vapour extraction system design

Abstract

While soil vapour extraction has been widely utilised as a remediation technology over the past decade, design and associated process performance modelling of full-scale systems has become important. This paper presents an effective optimisation approach, based on Zheng and Wang (Zheng, C. and Wang, P.P., 2002. A field demonstration of the simulation optimization approach for remediation system design. Ground Water, 40 (3), 258–265), for soil vapour extraction system (SVES) design. This approach integrates a multiphase flow and contaminant transport simulator, a genetic algorithm (GA) and a response surface (RS) method that employs non-linear regression analysis for constructing an approximation function as the objective of SVES constraint optimisation problems. The optimisation problem is to maximise the percentage of contaminant mass removal in terms of extraction rates at prescribed well locations under certain constraints. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the current approach, a few practical applications are performed and the associated optimal designs are compared against those using the simulation/optimisation approach. Results show that the proposed approach can provide a good optimal solution with a small computational effort.