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WATER
DECONTAMINATION
DECONTAMINATION OF WATER CONTAINING PCBs
| Mobile
Water Treatment |
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| Regardless
of the quantities of water to be treated, our mobile processing
system can be modified to treat as much as 10,000 gallons of
PCB-contaminated water per day. Water collected from tanks,
sanitary and storm sewers, berms, etc. is suctioned out of it's
containment using vacuum trucks and is bulked in settling tanks.
Depending on the site-specific characteristics, the water is
pretreated using a combination of pre-filters to remove suspended
particles of various sizes, followed by an oil sorption column
and finally an activated carbon filter system which sorbs the
PCBs. |
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| Treatment
of Water to less than 5 µg/l PCBs |
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Due
to the hydrophobic nature of PCBs, they are not found in water
at high concentrations unless other factors are involved. In
our experience, most PCB-contaminated water we have encountered
can be treated to meet local discharge criteria. Water decontaminated
using our process is typically in the 1-5 µg/l range which
meets the discharge criteria of the local regulatory authorities.
If more stringent guidelines are encountered, the water can
be reprocessed to reduce the PCB levels even further.
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| Disposal
of Untreatable Water |
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| In
some rare cases, we have found water to be untreatable. For
example, our analyses have shown some bulk storage tanks to
contain not only water but many other ingredients such as solvents,
detergents, sludges, oils, fuels, greases and sometimes ethylene
glycol and acids and bases. These chemical "soups"
have no clear stratification. The contaminants usually form
an emulsification which prevents phase separation and interferes
profoundly with the decontamination process to such an extent
that treatment of the water becomes uneconomical. Untreatable
water is disposed of by incineration. |
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