A project to treat groundwater and soil contamination at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., has attracted international attention and been added to a pilot program sponsored by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
The NATO Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society has picked one of the Marshall Centers in-situ remediation projects as one of just four worldwide for further study and evaluation.
The Marshall Center studies are evaluating various technologies that can be used at locations where hazardous materials or their residues are present in the soil, subsoil and ground water. In this case, the focus is on removing chlorinated volatile organic compounds from soils and ground water. This contamination occurred from former waste management activities at the facility before the potentially harmful results of such activities were known.
In 1994, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) placed the Marshall Center on the National Priorities List of sites eligible for cleanup under the Superfund, an environmental program managed by the EPA to clean up hazardous waste sites throughout the United States. The Marshall Center studies are part of a process to identify, investigate, sample and restore 67 sites at Marshall where hazardous material was used. Since 1994, the Marshall Center has spent an estimated $24 million on identifying, investigating, sampling and restoring the sites.
The project selected by the NATO committee involves injection into the ground of zero-valent iron powder small solid iron particles -- in slurry form using the Ferox sm process patented by ARS Technologies Inc., of Highland Park, N.J., an environmental engineering firm.
These chemical reduction pilot tests are to be conducted beneath two contaminated areas and are directed primarily at the treatment of trichloroethene, a solvent that was used to clean rocket engines, in the sub-surface soil and water. Invest
'"/>
Contact: Jerry Berg
jerry.berg@msfc.nasa.gov
256-544-0034
NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center News Center
24-Apr-2002