Differential processing to separate radionuclide and VOC from soil and ground water by air-sparged hydrocyclone technology. Final report

There are a wide variety of radioactive, toxic, and heavy metal contaminants in the ground waters and soils at DOE facilities. Some of the most common are uranium, technetium, trichloroethylene, and polychlorinated biphenyls. The project is a challenging task based on several key factors. For the removal of radio nuclide or heavy metal particles, first, on a mass fraction basis there is only a small amount of radionuclide particles in either writer or soil. In this way, a successful separation process must be capable of removing small amount of radio nuclide particles or other heavy metals from a very large quantities of soil or water. This feature poses a significant difficulty for most separation technologies which have a low specific processing capacity. Second, in addition to the need to have a high specific processing capacity, the separation technology must be able to selectively separate fine particles. For example, it is expected that most of radionuclide particles as well as 10-30% of the soil particles (depending on the site) are in the size range of less than 100 microns. Thus, a successful separation process must also be capable of efficiently removing minute quantities of small-sized particles from large quantities of soil of the same fine particle size. These two key factors are of critical importance and pose tremendous difficulties for any conventional technology available today