| Over the past decade, reactive capping technology has improved in the pursuit of remediating contaminated sediments and continues to do so by expanding technological qualities beyond sequestering pollutants from the aqueous phase. To effectively remediate contaminated sediments, these efforts of improvement must be studied beforehand as to provide guidance in making critical decisions that will further affect the contaminated sediments and their ecological surroundings. In this study, a bench-scale evaluation of six capping technologies considered for remediation of contaminated sediment native to an anonymous petroleum exploration and production site was conducted. Comparative capping technology performance was evaluated on the foundation of adsorption kinetics, equilibria, and removal efficacy. The kinetic study revealed rapid uptake of PAHs by most of the amendments within six hours of the beginning of mixing and the adsorption equilibria study identified amendment with the strongest affinity for sorption capacity towards specific PAHs. The column study demonstrated sorption behavior that may have been influenced from several factors, including short circuiting and partitioning. Together this foundation represents the technology's capability to sequester PAHs being transported from contaminated sediment. |
