PCE Remediation
Brief
As part of a commercial redevelopment project in Wallaceburg, Chatham-Kent, Ontario, a property formerly occupied by a drycleaner and then a gas station required remediation to mitigate tetrachloroethene (PCE) impacts, an artefact of the dry-cleaning operation.
The vacant lot, in a mixed commercial, industrial, and residential neighbourhood, necessitated a green approach requiring minimal infrastructure and disruption, and leaving a very small ecological footprint.
Process
IRLS used Direct Push Technology (DPT) to inject the compound EHCTM at multiple vertical intervals on a grid system. This technique combined abiotic dechlorination, via zero-valent iron, and biotic dechlorination, using organic carbon. PCE is susceptible to reductive dechlorination by both micro organisms as well as abiotically using compounds such as zero-valent iron. The EHC acted as a cost-effective, slow-release electron donor to generate reactive minerals via microbial iron and sulphate reduction while the organic carbon stimulated microbial activity.
Two additional injections were required to mitigate a hotspot approximately 10m2.
Results
Proactively recommending bacterial testing minimized increases to the original budget and remedial time frame.
To date, over 92% of the plume has been remediated to within the Ministry of Environment’s Table 3 Standards for industrial sites for PCE and its daughter products.
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