An Investigation of Gas Phase Mass Transport in Porous Media Systems
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- February 28, 2019
- Creator
-
Bordelon, Jeffery P.
- Affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering
- Abstract
- In recent years there has been increased concern regarding the subsurface contamination by volatile organic chemicals (VOC's). Many different subsurface remediation techniques have been used in order to remove these contaminants from the groundwater and from the unsaturated zone. Subsurface vapor extraction (SVE), also known as soil vapor extraction or soil venting, is one remediation technique which is being used with increased frequency to remove VOC's from the subsurface. The purpose of this research was to investigate the processes affecting the performance and applicability of this remediation technique. Laboratory experiments were conducted in two different columns packed with glass beads. VOC's at residual saturation were removed from the columns using nitrogen gas. Two different contaminants, pure toluene and a toluene-xylene mixture, were used to residually saturate the columns in order to observe the affect of contaminant volatility on removal rate. Several different pore velocities were used in order to determine if the assumption of local equilibrium between phases was valid. The results of this research indicate that the local equilibrium assumption is valid for the pore velocities to be encountered in the subsurface during the operation of a SVE system. Mass transfer rates between pure organic liquids and the vapor phase are sufficiently high for equilibrium to occur. Deviations from equilibrium were observed in several of the experiments as a result of diffusion and/or mass transfer limitations.
- Date of publication
- July 1990
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Advisor
- Aitken, Michael
- Miller, Cass T.
- DiGiano, Francis A.
- Degree
- Master of Science in Environmental Engineering
- Academic concentration
- Water Resources Engineering
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Graduation year
- 1990
- Language
- Deposit record
- c2589085-57f7-4434-bf45-a2666ba162b9
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