In situ venting of jet fuel-contaminated soil

The Air Force Engineering and Services center is performing a field demonstration of in situ soil venting at a 27,000-gallon jet fuel spill site at Hill AFB UT. In situ soil venting is a soil cleanup technique which uses vacuum blowers to pull large volumes of air through contaminated soil. The air flow sweeps out the soil gas, disrupting the equilibrium existing between the contaminants on the soil and in the vapor. This causes volatilization of the contaminants and subsequent removal in the air stream. In situ soil venting has been used for removing volatile contaminants such as gasoline and trichloroethylene, but a full-scale demonstration for removing jet fuel from soil has not been reported. This paper describes our initial site characterization, the one-vent pilot test, and the design and preliminary results of our full-scale in situ soil venting system. 5 refs., 7 figs.