Abstract
Biopolymers have been employed in many soil applications, such as oil-contaminated soil remediation, due to their environmentally friendly characteristics. This study focused on changes in the wettability and viscosity of polyethylene oxide (PEO) and sodium alginate (SA), according to the variation in concentration and their impact on oil-contaminated soil remediation using biopolymer-decane displacement tests. The contact angle and interfacial tension vary with concentration by adding biopolymer to water; however both parameters yield relatively constant values within the range of 2–10 g/L for the concentration of PEO and SA. In this study, their influence on fluid invasion patterns is insignificant compared to viscosity and flow rate. Viscosity increases with the concentration of PEO and SA, within the range of 0–10 g/L, which causes the biopolymer-decane displacement ratio to increase with concentration. Biopolymer-decane displacement increases with injected fluid velocity. At low flow rates, the effect of the biopolymer concentration on the displacement ratio is prominent. However the effect decreases with an increase in flow rate. Thus both biopolymer concentration and injection velocity should be considered to achieve the economic efficiency of soil remediation. The experimental results for the distribution of soils with different grain sizes indicate that the displacement ratio increases with the uniformity of the coefficient of soils.
Highlights
To improve the soil properties, organic agents such as polymers, biopolymers and surfactants have been developed, which indicate their capability of improving the shear strength and stiffness of soil [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
Biopolymers have been employed in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) due to their high viscosity and effect on the water-flood performance in EOR [14,15,16]
Polyethylene oxide (PEO) can be produced by the interaction of ethylene oxide with water, ethylene glycol, or ethylene glycol oligomers [23], and sodium alginate (SA) is a natural polysaccharide product that is extracted from brown seaweeds, which grow in cold-water regions [24]
Summary
To improve the soil properties, organic agents such as polymers, biopolymers and surfactants have been developed, which indicate their capability of improving the shear strength and stiffness of soil [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. The oil-flooding tests performed in the laboratory and the field using biopolymers have demonstrated the efficiency of biopolymers and polymers in EOR [17,18,19] Considering their high viscosity and properties, biopolymers have been considered for oil-contaminated soil remediation at shallow depths [20,21,22]. Polyethylene oxide (PEO) can be produced by the interaction of ethylene oxide with water, ethylene glycol, or ethylene glycol oligomers [23], and sodium alginate (SA) is a natural polysaccharide product that is extracted from brown seaweeds, which grow in cold-water regions [24] They do not influence geo-environments after their use. The physical properties of biopolymers within an extensive range of biopolymer concentration (i.e., 0, 2, 5 and 10 g/L) was investigated, and the flow of biopolymer solutions using three-dimensional column tests was identified in this study
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