In Situ Thermal Treatment of Chlorinated Solvent Source Zones

Combining in situ heating with physical recovery, chemical reaction and biodegradation processes has led to a spectrum of in situ thermal remediation options for the cleanup of soils, rock and groundwater impacted by dense nonaqueous phase liquids. The growth in the application and understanding of these technologies over the past two decades has been significant – to the point that their potential application is considered for many sites having short target cleanup time frames (less than a few years) and for contaminants that are not accessible by other cleanup technologies (such as mass diffused into fine-grained media). This chapter presents an overview of the most practiced thermal remediation technologies. The chapter then provides a synthesis of the available data from several field applications, summarizes the lessons learned to date and finally summarizes the current understanding of their performance presents several case studies. of well-monitored field-scale applications.