Self-sustaining smouldering combustion for the treatment of industrial oily waste.

Significant onsite handling and offsite management costs are incurred by oilfield operators annually to properly manage hydrocarbon waste streams such as tank bottoms or other oily sludge or oil impacted soil generated during oil and gas production processes. The current study reports for the first-time technical results of a field trial on use of a smouldering combustion technology performed in an active oilfield. Two treatment batches with oily sludges, stabilized through blending with soil, resulted in permanent hydrocarbon removal (98-99.9% reduction) to create treated soil that met standards for reuse as clean backfill onsite. Emissions profile data collected pre- and post-thermal oxidizer indicated effective removal of volatile organic compounds, CO and SO2, but had increased NO and CO2 due to combustion of propane to affect the thermal oxidation. Regulatory, financial, environmental and safety considerations are discussed in context of future full-scale smouldering technology deployment. The technology has the potential to lower overall unit costs for management of hydrocarbon impacted waste and reduce waste sent to landfills, which can benefit more remote sites.

Demonstration of a scalable process for remediation of petroleum-impacted soil using electron beam irradiation.

Petroleum-impacted soils pose several hazards and require fast, effective, and versatile remediation techniques. Electron beam irradiation provides a novel means of heating soil and inducing non-equilibrium chemical reactions and has previously been applied to environmental remediation. In this work a scalable process for remediation of petroleum-impacted soils using a 100 kW, 3 MeV industrial electron beam is investigated. The process involves conveying impacted soil through a beam at a controllable rate to achieve a desired dose of approximately 1000 kGy. Reductions to less than 1% Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon (TPH) content from an initial TPH of 3.3% were demonstrated for doses of 710-1370 kGy. These reductions were achieved in in conditions equivalent to 4 m3 per hour, demonstrating the applicability of this technique to remediation sites. TPH reduction appeared to be temperature-dependent but not heavily dependent on dose rate, with reductions of 96% achieved for a dose of 1370 kGy and peak temperature of 540 °C. The performance of the process at high dose rates suggests that it can be incorporated into remediation of sites for which a high rate of material processing is required with a relatively small device footprint.