Abstract
The application of microwave technology has been investigated in the remediation of diesel-contaminated soil. The paper deals with economic assessment by means of cost analysis and degradation characteristics at different microwave powers for total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) in diesel contaminated soils. The soils from S Mountain around the D University were sampled. The samples were screened with 2.0 mm mesh and dried for 6 hours before the diesel was added into the dried soils. The diesel-contaminated soil (3,300 mg THP/kg soil) was prepared with diesel (S Co.). The drying process was carried out in a microwave oven, a standard household appliance with a 2,450 MHz frequency and 700 W of power. The experiments were conducted from 0 to 20 minutes as the microwave powers increased from 350W to 500W to 700W. The concentrations of TPH were analysed using a gas chromatography/mass spectrometer (GC/MS). The initial concentration of TPH was 3,300 mg TPH/kg soil. The weight of contaminated soil was 200g. The concentration of TPH was decreased to 1,828 mg TPH/kg soil (44.7%), 1,347 mg TPH/kg soil (59.2%) and 1,014 mg TPH/kg soil (69.3%) at 350W, 500W and 700W for 15 minutes respectively. In addition, the curve was best fit with first order kinetics using the least-square method. The ranges of a first order rate constant k and r-square were $0.0298{\sim}0.0375min^{-1}$ and $0.9373{\sim}0.9541$ respectively.
