REMEDIAL SERVICES
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UTICA, NEW YORK
Paragon Environmental Construction, Inc. was the sole contractor for a pilot study performed for the City of Utica to demonstrate effectiveness of the Allu bucket processing to aerate soil and stimulate biological processes to degrade petroleum constituents in soils excavated at a former bulk petroleum terminal. The site had a sixty-year history of petroleum storage and dispensing that resulted in multiple releases of virtually every product handled throughout its history, including diesel, gasoline and residual fuel oils Nos. 4 and 6. The site investigation documented substantial subsurface contamination of approximately 40,000 cubic yards.
The goal of this study was to obtain field data to design a full scale treatment for site soils including the soil bacterial response, decay of VOCs and SVOCs, treatment time required to meet clean-up goals, optimum soil moisture content, and biological response to added nutrients versus Allu™ processing alone.
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Matt Petroleum
Paragon Environmental Construction, Inc. was hired to excavate and process soils for this study. At the direction of the project engineer soils from two areas were excavated form both above and below the water table and stockpiled to allow for water drainage.
These soils were then screened to break down large soil chunks and to remove large rocks, lumber, cinder blocks, etc. Then a 2.3 cubic yard Allu™ bucket was attached to a 270 excavator for Allu processing. The open-topped bucket has three rotating steel rollers with rectangular barbs, whose direction can be reversed, on the bottom. Soils are scooped into the bucket top and the excavator rotated over the release point. The rollers are then activated to drop the soil through the rollers. Processed soils are aerated, soil chunks broken down, and the soil density decreased. By scooping up soils from the bottom of the pile the top cascades down and the resulting pile is overturned – bottom to top.
After 4-6 turnovers approximately half the soils met clean-up goals. As the remaining soils contained heavy silts and were slower to processes, they required more turnovers. After 8-10 turnovers these soils were close to meeting clean-up goals. Processing of these soils will likely require 6-10 weeks to meet clean-up goals. The process is highly effective for gasoline and diesel containing soils. One small pile (approximately 30 cubic yards) was reduced from a VOC concentration of 2000 ppm to 50 ppm in just five weeks.
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Copyright © 2010 Paragon Environmental Construction, Inc.
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