Abstract
The present work describes a coke oven soil treatability study by landfarming, conducted on-site in a field scale facility covering 100 m2. The soil contamination was mainly due to high concentrations of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) up to 1140 mg/Kg dry weight (ΣEPA). Along the treatment process the soil was characterised at the chemical, microbiological and ecotoxicological levels. After 3 months a reduction of 63% in total PAHs concentration was observed, being detected a more pronounced reduction for PAHs with 2, 3 and 4 rings (79%). Concomitantly, a change in the composition of the microbial population was observed with a significant increase in the PAHs degrading and total heterotrophic colonies. Concerning the ecotoxicity and genotoxicity data no effect was detected in the treated soil samples eluates.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The present work was partially supported by the EU programme Environment, contract no. ENV4-CT96-0343, “Ecotoxicological monitoring of industrially polluted soils and assessment of the respective remediation techniques”.