Nature Environment and Pollution Technology

Abstract

The benzene and light petroleum fractions that were spilled during the life of the refinery were not remediated. Density is a physical property that is characteristic of soil and provides information on its porosity, aeration and infiltration capacity. Density is an important factor in determining the mass of contaminant present in the soil. The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of soil density on the retention of benzene and light petroleum fractions. The results showed that the influence of soil density in determining the mass of a specific contaminant, by employing mass balance, is directly proportional to the density values that were used. When calculating mass with bulk density, the amount is lower than the amount obtained with real density. This observation is based on bulk density taking into account in the sample volume, the volume as a whole which includes pore volume. The volume of porous space is therefore reduced and accounts for an increase of the mass of contaminant found at that depth. It was possible to determine the influence of density of the soil in a real case, specifically for a large-size environmental liability, and to obtain suitable information on the mass of remaining contaminant after applying mass balance. The mass of contaminant that is obtained represents a proportional percentage of the value of the density as it increases, when taking bulk density as a reference. This finding is consistent with those that have been published in studies for columns, except this case was a study of an environmental liability instead of being a laboratory study.

Keywords

Full Text

References