Decontamination of polyaromatic hydrocarbons from soil by steam stripping: mathematical modeling of the mass transfer and energy requirement.

For cleaning of contaminated soil from polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), a thermal separation process is applied. The process uses superheated steam that is supplied through a nozzle together with a suspension (approximately 40% soil content) of the contaminated soil into a tube reactor. In the reactor, the soil suspension is vaporized, and the PAH are stripped from the soil at temperatures of 140-300 degrees C. In a cyclone, a solid-vapor separation is carried out, and after going through a condenser, a separation of the condensed water and the PAH is obtained. For improvement of the economical performance, a heat recovery is integrated. This is realized by preheating the water/stream supplied to the evaporator by cooling the vapor steam leaving the reactor. For the mathematical description of the process, the removal of the PAH from the soil is considered to take place by a desorption process. Sorption isotherms are measured by batch experiments and can be described by isotherms of Langmuir type. A dispersion model is used to describe the mass transfer of the process. The process is mathematically modeled for instationary and stationary operation. The simulation predicts the lowest energy consumption at a good cleaning performance at a steam-to-suspension ratio of 5.