SVE Design: Mass Transfer Limitation due to Molecular Diffusion

Abstract

Vaporization and soil adsorption are the two mass transfer mechanisms that control contaminant recovery rates for soil vapor extraction (SVE) systems. At most soil remediation sites, contaminants are distributed among three phases, namely, soil particles, pore water, and soil vapor. Contaminant mass transfer from adsorption sites into a convective vapor stream involves desorption, diffusion through pore water, and vaporization into soil vapor. An SVE design model is proposed to describe this three-phase mass transfer process and assist the design and evaluation of SVE systems. The model contains analytical solutions developed to estimate contaminant concentrations in the vapor phase and predict contaminant removal rates. Monitoring data from two full-scale SVE systems were used for model development and calibration. The results suggest that contaminant diffusion through the pore water is the rate-limiting step and leads to remediation inefficiency of an SVE system. Mass transfer retardation from molecular diffusion in water is likely the major contributing component to the venting efficiency coefficient of Staudinger et al.