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Innovative and sustainable remediation process: Bacteria eat up contaminated sites
In the course of the orienting investigation carried out by our M&P Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH in Hanover in 2015, contamination by cyanides and PAHs was detected for the first time both in the soil and in the groundwater on the site of Stadtwerke Rinteln GmbH, which was causally related to the former use of the site as a gasworks (between 1896 and 1964).
Numerous further investigations have since identified the former production and waste burial as the two main sources of damage. Since the contamination extends beyond the anthropogenic fill to deeper soil layers and into the groundwater, the site needs to be remediated.
The classic approach of excavating soil is problematic from several points of view, since on the one hand there are hardly any landfills left that accept such contaminated material, and on the other hand a remediation of this magnitude would generate costs of close to 8 million euros.
In order not to significantly jeopardise the current operation of the municipal utility, a suitable remediation method without demolition work and soil excavation was to be found. For this reason, an innovative procedure was agreed upon, which was developed in cooperation with the companies M&P Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH and Sensatec GmbH and supervised by our employee Aglaia Nagel.
The approach is biological. "Bacteria that are already present in the soil eat cyanides and PAHs," explains Thomas Sewald, technical manager of the municipal utility. Since the bacteria in the soil are not sufficient, they are nourished with oxygen and glucose via boreholes to increase their numbers.
After the laboratory tests were completed promisingly at the end of 2019, the field tests carried out in spring 2020 also demonstrated microbial pollutant degradation within a very short time.
Commissioning of the plant is scheduled to start in May 2021 and will continue until around 2024.
The municipal utilities have thus opted for a low-disturbance, particularly sustainable and ecologically valuable version of the renovation.
Photo: Kerstin Lange, Schaumburger Zeitung
Click here for the PDF of the article in the Schaumburger Zeitung: https://mup-group.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/ri_altlastenentsorgung_opie.pdf
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