PetroLuxus™ CS-401
Contaminated Soil Remediation and Recovery
Coal Tar and MGP Contamination.
Before the United States had a network of natural gas pipelines and
electricity (early 1800-mid 1900's), the fuel for lighting, heating, and cooking was manufactured from Coal and petroleum at thousands of manufacturing facilities across the country, know as Manufactured Gas Plants or MGP's. The first manufactured gas plant built in the United States was in Baltimore,
Maryland in 1816. By the turn of the 20th century almost every city had its own manufactured gas plant (Gonzalo,
1995), with larger cities often having more than one plant. In addition to the commercial MGP's many railroad companies, military installations, large institutions (e.g. hotels, hospitals, prisons, schools), industrial facilities, and large private homes were equipped with gas plants.
As many as 50,000 plants were built during the 140 years of MGP operations.
Coal tar is one of the harmful by-products created when coal is carbonized to make coke or gasified to make coal gas. Coal Tar still resides in the land surrounding these sites. Coal tar is a brown or black liquid of high viscosity and smells of naphthalene and aromatic hydrocarbons. Coal tars are complex and variable mixtures of phenols, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and heterocyclic compounds, which are considered caustic, toxic and hazardous to humans and animals.
The tars are made up of 500 to 3000 different compounds and since they are denser than water, they sink into the groundwater where they contaminate passing ground water. Tar is not to be considered equivalent to asphalt, which is a residual of natural petroleum deposits and of oil refineries. An additional byproduct of gas manufacturing was the generation of impurities such as ammonia, cyanide, sulfur, heavy metals and particularly arsenic.
While some of these sites, especially those currently owned and operated by large gas and electric utility companies, are being addressed, most of the former MGP sites have never been identified. As a result of these activities, hazardous materials are present in the subsurface and groundwater at thousands of locations in more than 38 states.
Typically, the remediation of MGP's and Coal Tar sites have been limited to several techniques, all of which require excavation of the land and transport to a qualified landfill. An even more effective process, but considerably mre costly, is the excavation and transport of contaminated soil to a processing facility, where it is burned to ash in large furnaces. These processing facilities are now under scrutiny of the EPA, because of airborne contaminants being found in the smoke and ash particulates. These excavate and haul processes are extremely expensive since the responsible party must replace the contaminated soil with clean soil.
Coal Tar and MGP Remediation: PetroLuxus™ CS-401
PetroLuxus™ CS-401 allows for on-site cleaning of contaminated soil while implementing the extraction and recovery of hydrocarbons, heavy metals and toxins, thereby eliminating the cost of transportation and burial in a hazardous waste landfill. CS-401 preferentially displaces hydrocarbon contamination from the surface rather than the usual surfactant reaction of dissolving and emulsifying.
The demulsifying feature of the CS-401 is significant in soil washing because of the ease of liquid phase separation after the cleaning process. By remediating on-site and greatly reducing the hauling and landfill cost, the result could be savings of 35% to 50% over existing technology.