Grant Will Help Study Military Cleanups

By Knoxville News Sentinel

KNOXVILLE – Researchers at the University of Tennessee and Stanford University have received a $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to help plan how to clean up contaminated groundwater at military sites.

Dr. Jack Parker, a research professor at Tennessee’s Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment, and Stanford’s Peter Kitanidis, professor of civil and environmental engineering , will develop methods for planning remediation of sites contaminated by troublesome and costly toxic substances called dense nonaqueous phase liquid (DNAPL) .

DNAPLs don’t dissolve or mix easily in water. An example would be a chlorinated solvent such as trichloroethylene, a common degreasing agent that the EPA warned six years ago was contaminating air, soil and water at hundreds of waste sites around the country.

DNAPLs have also been linked to health problems sauch as cancer and birth defects.

“They don’t degrade very well, and they tend to get stuck in pockets,” said Randy Gentry of the Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment.

The project will take advantage of new cleanup technologies, Parker said, and will look at techniques that meet cleanup objectives at the lowest cost.

“Most of the strategies involve some combination of enhanced biological decay and some sort of aggressive treatment of the source zone ,” he said.

Other techniques include treatment of extracted groundwater, containment methods to prevent migration of the toxin, and chemical and thermal treatments.

Originally published by Knoxville News Sentinel .

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