Effective Distribution of Injected Emulsified Oil for In-situ Bioremediation of Heterogenous Aquifers

Abstract

Emulsified oil can be injected into the subsurface to enhance the in-situ bioremediation of chlorinated solvents, energetic materials, and some heavy metals. Current design practice for these remediation systems is not well formalized and depends much on "engineering intuition." To better understand the effects of different remediation system designs, computer models are being developed that can accurately and efficiently simulate how the oil moves through and reacts in the subsurface. To this end, we have developed a Langmuir isotherm based transport model to simulate the distribution of emulsified oils in an aquifer in order to investigate what effect changing the volume of emulsion, amount of oil, and injection pattern has on distributing the oil through the aquifer. Upon investigation we found that increasing the volume of emulsion and mass of oil has a diminishing increase on distribution and that injection pattern has little effect at typical injection volumes. We further developed regression equations to estimate the distribution of emulsified oil for both areal and barrier treatment to be used in improving injection system design.