Effects of surfactants on cleaning up sandy soil contaminated with kerosene through soil washing

The contamination of soils and groundwater by petroleum products is a widespread environmental problem. Soil pollutions caused by petrochemical activities, oil spills and leakage is not only an environmental issue but also a geotechnical issue. In addition to the environmental impacts of oil pollution on soil, physical and chemical reactions between soil and the contaminant lead to a change in the geotechnical soil behavior. If it yields a negative effect, the strength of the soil may decrease. Cleaning up the soil is one of the methods to deal with soil contamination. In this paper, washing the sandy soil contaminated with kerosene had been studied. To increase the efficiency of soil washing, SDS and Triton X100 surfactants have been used. Effect of factors such as concentration of surfactants, volume of washing solutions and time washing on process of soil washing were studied. In all these experiments at different concentrations, the removal efficiency of TX100 surfactant was more than SDS. For the volume solutions, the volume of 200 ml was satisfactory for mixing. It was seen, 30 minutes was identified as the optimum time for soil washing processes

Keywords:

soil washing , kerosene , sandy soil , surfactant , removal