Soil pollution with crude oil (petroleum hydrocarbons) has been considered as one of the most serious environmental concerns, especially when associated with accidental spills on large-scale. Thermal processes such as ex-situ thermal desorption, incineration and pyrolysis were found to be the effective treatments. The pyrolytic treatment is preferable on sandy soil due to lower energy requirement and improved soil fertility as compared to other thermal processes. The present study has been conducted for the efficient pyrolysis of crude oil in sandy soil under the various experimental conditions such as pyrolytic temperature (300-400 °C), heating time (30-60 min), amount of clay content (0-20%), and the degree of crude oil contamination (5-10% by weight). The optimized condition for pyrolysis was found to be 60 min of heating at 400 °C which removed 98% total petroleum hydrocarbon and lowered its concentration from 19,564 mg/kg to 412 mg/kg for 10% crude oil contaminated soil with 5% clay content. The seed of <i>Lactuca sative</i> was used for the germination to measure the toxicity of the treated soils. The pyrolyzed soil support up to 30% of seed germination which can be comparable with the 30% growth in uncontaminated soil. The results of the present study demonstrated that highly contaminated sandy soil by crude oil can be treated using pyrolytic process in the presence of substantial amount of clay. The present study provides a future scope for the development of a sustainable, cost effective and eco-friendly technology for the remediation of soil contaminated with crude oil.

Pyrolytic treatment for the remediation of crude oil contaminated soil

255th National Meeting (2018)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.