Integrated treatment of PAH contaminated soil by soil washing, ozonation and biological treatment

Abstract

The aim of the study was to optimise three different treatment methods and to find out if the integration of soil washing, ozonation and biological treatment could be a feasible method for the remediation of aged oil contaminated with PAHs. Three different ozone doses and soil washing were studied in different pHs in order to assess their effect to the degradation and enhancement of biodegradability of PAH in the soil and water phase. Main target of the study was to find out a method with which the PAH concentrations could be decreased below the Finnish guideline level for total PAHs. In this case, the initial concentration of PAHs was 1200 mg kg −1 and therefore almost 85% degradation of PAHs was required. Any of the methods studied was not able to reach this target level alone, but by several combinations of the methods studied achieved 90% reduction of PAHs. The consumption of ozone was 5–10 times lower in the integrated treatments of soil washing, ozonation and biological treatment than without prewashing.