A Transient Simulation of Heated Soil Vapor Extraction System

Soil remediation process by heated soil vapor extraction system has drawn considerably attention for the last few years. The areas around chemical companies or waste disposal sites have been seriously contaminated from the chemicals and other polluting materials that are disposed off. Our present study is concentrated on modeling one transient Heated Soil Vapor Extraction System and predicting the time required for effective remediation. The process developed by Advanced Remedial Technology, consists of a heating source pipe and the extraction well embedded in the soil. The number of heat source pipes and the extraction wells depends on the type of soil, the type of pollutants, moisture content of the soil and the size of the area to be cleaned. The heat source heats the soil, which is transported in the interior part of the soil by means of conduction and convection. This heating of soil results in vaporization of the gases, which are then driven out of the soil by the extraction well. The extraction well consists of the blower which would suck the vaporized gases out of the system. A three-dimensional meshed geometry was developed using gambit. Different boundary conditions were used for heating and suction well and for other boundaries. Concentrations of different chemicals were collected from the actual site and this data was used as an initial condition. The analysis uses the species transport and discrete phase modeling to predict the time required to clean the soil under specific conditions. This analysis could be used for predicting the changes of chemical concentrations in the soil during the remediation process. This will give us more insight to the physical phenomena and serve as a numerical predictive tool for more efficient process.