Cleaning Up Clay

Using soil vapor extraction to remove volatile organic compounds from ground water and unsaturated soils can achieve faster and more-complete cleanups than conventional pump-and-treat remediation methods. In recent years, more treatment options have been developed for pump-and-treat programs to improve efficiency and cleanup time, including two-phase vacuum extraction (VE) and multiphase VE, which treat both soil and ground water. A look at three sites where remediation contractors used two-phase extraction to clean volatile organic compound (VOC) contamination shows how these new systems expand recovery possibilities.