The effect of Triton X100 and Tween 80 surfactants on diesel removal from soil using electrokinetic remediation

Soil and groundwater contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons poses an ever increasing and serious danger to human life. Due to their toxicity, environmental cleaning from petroleum products is necessary. Among the various methods for soil remediation, the electrokinetic approach has more applicability due to its high speed and low cost. The purpose of this research is to assess the effectiveness of the electrokinetic method for removing diesel-contaminated soil while incorporating the surfactants Triton X100 and Tween 80. Moreover, the impact of regulating pH control in catholyte and anolyte and different concentrations of surfactants on the process of modifying soil through electrokinetics has been studied. It is observed that without the presence of a surfactant, the electrokinetic technique exhibits minimal effectiveness in cleaning diesel from the soil, while in the presence of a surfactant, the removal efficiency increases significantly and therefore this method is effective in reducing soil pollution. Also, by controlling the pH in the catholyte and anolyte and increasing the concentration of surfactant, the removal efficiency of diesel from soil increases. Tween 80 indicated higher removal deficiencies with the ability to eliminate approximately 39% of diesel at the 0.15% intensity of surfactant after 10 days experiment. The uniaxial testing was carried out to distinguish the geotechnical properties of the dust, such as the cohesive strength of the soil sample under axial compression without any external confining pressure. It showed that the cleaning procedure improved the compacted stability of the soil and soil resistance parameters about 12 percent.