Treatment of Pesticide-Contaminated Soils with Thermal Desorption Technologies

Abstract

Both laboratory-scale and full-scale studies have shown that thermal desorption is an effective technology for treating soils contaminated with a variety of organochlorine pesticides. Soil decontamination results are presented from six full-scale and nine laboratory, bench and pilot-scale thermal desorption treatability studies. The impacts of several key factors that influence thermal desorption kinetics, total pesticide removal efficiency, and achievable pesticide residual concentration are discussed. Conclusions are presented regarding scale-up issues in predicting the performance of full-scale systems from laboratory, bench, or pilot-scale tests.