Research progress on the soil vapor extraction

Abstract

Soil vapor extraction (SVE), the most common, efficient and economical means of remediation, is an in-situ remediation technique for removing volatile pollutants from unsaturated soil. The paper briefly introduced the technological rationale and cha?racteristics, summarized the theories and application research for SVE at home and abroad, and made the expectations and suggestions for the research on SVE. The international scholars have systematically researched the influence factors, remediation mechanism and numerical simulation of SVE. At present, SVE has been mostly integrated with other techniques to form enhanced SVE techniques, such as thermally enhanced SVE and AS-SVE (Air sparging-SVE), to be used for the field remediation widely. Compared with foreign countries, researches of Chinese scholars mainly focus on the laboratory research, especially on the influence factors, but rarely study the SVE model and the mass transfer mechanism of pollutant in SVE process. The SVE pilot studies are rare in China, and the field application has not been reported. In view of this situation, Chinese scholars in the future research can focus on the following aspects: (1) strengthening the research and systematized summary of SVE technical parameters and related knowledge; (2) strengthening the research on the mechanism and model of gas-phase mass transfer of pollutants in soil during SVE process; (3) strengthening the research on the enhanced SVE techniques and its application to actual site remediation.