Investigation of Coal Tar Mobility at a Former MGP Site
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 14, Issue 11
Abstract
The presence of coal tar in the subsurface of former manufactured gas plant sites poses an environmental hazard and a potential threat to public health. Coal tar can release various chemical compounds that are transported into the groundwater. Before any efforts can be made to remove coal tar from contaminated subsurface soils, it is recommended to characterize coal tar properties and composition and to delineate the residual saturation point between mobile and immobile coal tar. This paper presents a new innovative field device, the Res-SAT field tool, and laboratory procedures that can be used to determine the saturation-capillary pressure relationship for a soil-water coal-tar system and the critical pressure for coal tar mobility.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This work was funded by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and the results from this research were published in EPRI Product ID 1005285. The writers thank Andrew Coleman of Lehigh University (formerly with EPRI) and Scott T. Saroff of Syracuse University for their help on this project. In addition, the writers thank Derek Brown of Lehigh University for his support as well on this project. We would also like to express our deepest gratitude and condolences to Rene Waterman’s family, who was instrumental in conducting the research in this project and passed away in a tragic car accident in 2006.
References
American Petroleum Institute. (1980). “Underground spill cleanup manual.” Rep. No. 1628, American Petroleum Institute, Washington, D.C., 1–34.
Amyx, J. W., Bass, D. M., Jr., and Whiting, R. L. (1960). Petroleum reservoir engineering, McGraw-Hill, New York, 610.
Anderson, M. R. (1988). “The dissolution and transport of dense non-aqueous phase liquids in saturated porous media.” Ph.D. dissertation, Oregon Graduate Center, Beaverton, Ore.
Barranco, F. T., and Dawson, H. E. (1999). “Influence of aqueous pH on the interfacial properties of coal tar.” Environ. Sci. Technol., 33, 1589–1603.
Bear, J. (1979). Hydraulics of groundwater, McGraw-Hill, New York, 569.
Boley, T. M., and Overcamp, T. J. (1998). “Displacement of nonwetting liquids from unsaturated sands by water infiltration.” Ground Water, 36(4), 810–814.
Brooks, R. H., and Corey, A. T. (1964). “Hydraulic properties of porous media.” Rep. No. 3, Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, Colo., 1–27.
Brown, D., Gupta, L., Moo-Young, H. K., and Coleman, A. (2005). “Raoult’s law-based method for determination of coal tar average molecular weight.” J. Toxicol. Environ. Chem., 24(8), 1886–1892.
Cary, J. W., McBride, J. F., and Simmons, C. S. (1989). “Trichloroethylene residuals in the capillary fringe as affected by air-entry pressure.” J. Environ. Qual., 18, 72–77.
Chatzis, I., Kuntamukklua, M. S., and Morrow, N. R. (1988). “Effect of capillary number on the microstructure of residual oil in strongly water-wet sandstones.” SPE Reservoir Eng., August, 902–912.
Cohen, R. M., Bryda, A. P., Shaw, S. T., and Spalding, C. P. (1992). “Evaluation of visual methods to detect soil and water.” Ground Water Monit. Rev., 12(4), 132–141.
Cohen, R. M., and Mercer, J. W. (1993). DNAPL site evaluation, CRC, Boca Raton, Fla.
Convery, M. P. (1979). “The behavior and movement of petroleum products in unconsolidated superficial deposits.” MS thesis, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Corey, A. T. (1986). Mechanics of immiscible fluids in porous media, Water Resources Publications, Littleton, Colo., 255.
Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). (1998). “Estimating release of polyaromatic hydrocarbons from coal tar contaminated soil at manufactured gas plant sites.” Rep. No. TR-101060, Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, Calif.
Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). (2004a). “Residual saturation of coal tar in porous media.” Rep. No. TR-1009425, Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, Calif.
Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). (2004b). “Laboratory assess-ment of free coal tar at MGP sites.” Rep. No. TR-1009426, Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, Calif.
Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). (2004c). “Development of a coal tar residual saturation (Res-SAT) field tool for manufactured gas plant sites.” Rep. No. TR-1005285, Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, Calif.
Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). (2005). “Evaluation of the Res-SAT tool to delineate mobile and leachable coal tar in subsurface soils.” Rep. No. TR-1010138, Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, Calif.
Fussell, D. R., Godjen, H., Hayward, P., Lilie, R. H., Marco, A., and Panisi, C. (1981). “Revised inland oil spill clean-up manual.” Rep. No. 7/81, 150.
Guarnaccia, J. F., et al. (1992). “Multiphase chemical transport in porous media.” Rep. No. EPA/600/S-92/002, Robert S. Kerr Environmental Research Laboratory, Ada, Okla., 19.
Harkins, S. M., Truesdale, R. S., Hill, R., Hoffman, P., and Winters, S. (1988). “U.S. production of manufactured gases: Assessment of past disposal practices.” Rep. No. EPA/600/S2-88/-12, Cincinnati.
Hayes, T. D., Linz, D. G., Nakles, D. V., and Leuschner, A. P. (1996). Management of manufactured gas plant sites, Vols. 1–2, Amherst Scientific Publishers, Amherst, Mass.
Hoag, G. E., and Marley, M. C. (1986). “Gasoline residual saturation in unsaturated uniform aquifer materials.” J. Environ. Eng., 112(3), 586–604.
Hugaboom, D. A., and Powers, S. E. (2002). “Recovery of coal tar and creosote from porous media: The influence of wettability.” Ground Water Monit. Rem., 22(4), 83–90.
Jury, W. A., Gardner, W. R., and Gardner, W. H. (1991). Soil physics, Wiley, New York.
Kueper, B. H., and Frind, E. O. (1991a). “Two-phase flow in heterogeneous porous media: Model development.” Water Resour. Res., 27(6), 1049–1058.
Kueper, B. H., and Frind, E. O. (1991b). “Two-phase flow in heterogeneous porous media. II: Model application.” Water Resour. Res., 27(6), 1059–1070.
Lin, C., Pinder, G. F., and Wood, E. F. (1982). “Water resources program.” Rep. No. 83-WR-2, Water Resources Program, Princeton Univ., Princeton, N.J.
Parker, J. C., and Lenhard, R. J. (1987). “A model for hysteretic constitutive relations governing multiphase flow. I: Saturation-pressure relations.” Water Resour. Res., 23(12), 2187–2196.
Pfannkuch, H. (1984). “Mass-exchange processes at the petroleum-water interface.” Proc., Toxic–Waste Technical Meeting, M. F. Hult, ed., Elsevier Science, New York.
Rathmell, J. J., Braun, P. H., and Perkins, T. K. (1973). “Reservoir waterflood residual oil saturation from laboratory tests.” J. Pet. Technol., 25(2), 175–185.
Rhodes, E. O. (1979). Bituminous materials: Asphalts, tars, and pitches, Vol. 3, Kreiger Publishing, Huntington, N.Y.
Salehzadeh, A., and Demond, A. H. (1999). “Pressure cell for measuring capillary pressure relationships of contaminated sands.” J. Environ. Eng., 125(4), 385–388.
Saroff, S., Finney, D. D., Tseng, L., and K., Goldenberg. (2008). “Three-dimensional depiction of coal tar in soils and sediments within the overburden stratigraphic framework using TarGOST.” Proc., National Conf., Triad Investigations: New Approaches and Innovative Strategies.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). (2000). “A resource for MGP site characterization and remediation—Expedited site characterization and source remediation at former manufactured gas plant sites.” Rep. No. USEPA 542-R-00–005, USEPA, Washington, D.C.
van Genuchten, M. T. (1980). “A closed-form equation for predicting the hydraulic conductivity of unsaturated soils.” Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 44, 892–898.
van Genuchten, M. T., and Nielsen, D. R. (1985). “On describing and predicting the hydraulic properties of unsaturated soils.” Ann. Geophys., 3, 615–628.
Wang, F. H. L. (1988). “Effect of wettability alteration on water/oil relative permeability, dispersion, and flowable saturation in porous media.” SPE Reservoir. Eng., 5, 617–628.
Wilson, J. L., Conrad, S. H., Mason, W. R., Peplinski, W., and Hagen, E. (1990). “Laboratory investigation of residual liquid organics.” Rep. No. USEPA/600/6-90/004, Robert S. Kerr Environmental Research Laboratory, Ada, Okla.
Zytner, R. G., Biswas, N., and Bewtra, J. K. (1993). “Retention capacity of dry soils for NAPLs.” Environ. Technol., 14, 1073–1080.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 14 • Issue 11 • November 2009
Pages: 1221 - 1234
Copyright
© 2009 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 24, 2006
Accepted: May 15, 2009
Published online: Oct 15, 2009
Published in print: Nov 2009
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.