Technical Bin

I'm not a professor or a research scientist. 99% of what I do isn't published in peer reviewed journals. But, I work with really smart people on interesting problems, and we generate stuff for the folks like us to look at or listen to. This "gray literature" should be more available. Here's some hints at stuff - reach out to me for requests of actual doc.

A General Discussion on In-situ Surfactant Use

The use of surfactants in remediation isn't new. It's another one of MANY technologies borrowed from the oil drilling fields. There, it was SEOR, surfactant enhanced oil recovery. In remediation, we've the same objective: lower surface tension, solubilize, and extract the contaminant or make the molecules that are the contaminant more available for biological or chemical degradation. I was first involved in projects that used a surfactant for remediation in the early 2000s when we used Biosolve's Pinkwater diluted down and injected with petroleum degrading microbes to "polish" residual benzene, toluene, ethylbenezene and naphthalenes at old gasoline releases. I also played around with Simple Green combined with sodium persulfate to facilitate chemical oxidation of residual petroleum hydrocarbons that were adsorbed to clay and organic laden soils. This poster compares three sites where surfactant was applied at very different geographic settings and also tries to dispell some myths that persisit about the risks of surfactant use at a site. Battelle 2026.

A Complicated Mix of Contaminants

What do you do when faced with a mix of nitroaroamatics, chlorinateds, clay vadose soils, and super-high concentrations (like, ridiculously high)? You conduct a bench study and try your best to tease out a plan without spending a half-million dollars on the bench. Then, pray for meaningful results. Battelle 2026.

Indicator Plant Geobotany: A precursor to successful phytoremediation

This is a neat bench study performed by one of my friends. I maybe funded it or something. We were thinking about using plants to remediate arsenic at a railroad site I managed. My brilliant friend Barry said, "Let's look at horsetails!"

Results of Pneumatic Fracturing to Aid Persulfate Distribution in Clay Soils

This fun little project used pneumatic fracturing to emplace sand granules into clay, creating pathways for injection of chemical reagents used to treat gasoline-related contaminants. I did this project in a town called Sparr, located just a wee bit north of Ocala, Florida. Poster presented in 2012.

Sustainable Remediation Panel (2018)

At the 34th Annual Conference on Soils, Sediments, Water & Energy, participated as a panelist on the Sustainable Remediation Panel, and told the development story of the Norfolk Southern sustainable remediation program I championed. We delved into the structure of the program, what our initial goals were, and how we scaled the program to meet our perceived needs at the time of program creation.

Treatability Evaluation for Chlorinated Propanes and Ethanes in Groundwater Under Reductive Dechlorination Treatments

The 30th Annual Conference on Soils, Sediments, Water & Energy (held October 2014). The presentation was on remediation of chloropropanes, chloroethanes and organochlorine pesticides. Abiotic destruction was demonstrated using organic carbon and mZVI. But, abiotic paths are not effective for chlorinated propane's 1,2-dichloropropane and 1,2,3-trichloropropane. Chloropropane biodegradation pathways mediated by bacteria are known to exist but poorly studied. This study looked at anaerobic biodegradation paths, and illustrated both the need for carbon supply for cometabolic degradation and clearly demonstrated required presence of specific microbes (KB-1 Plus) for degradation of chlorinated propanes and ethanes.

ISCO of VOCs and BTEX Plume in Low Permeability Soils

A 2012 case study on the use of in-situ chemical oxidation remediation efforts at an active equipment storage/maintenance facility in New Jersey, USA. The talk reviewed initial conceptual site model, and the evolution of the model as new data was collected using high-resolution characterization tools, and how that affected our remedial approach. A bench study evaluating catalyzed hydrogen peroxide dose regime was conducted. Recognizing technical challenges with selected peroxide approach and resultant shift to activated persulfate field results are discussed. Finally, discussion of the role ISCO might play in shortening life cycle costs via system perturbation is provided.

Novel Mapping of LNAPL Preferential Pathways at a Rail Yard Using Sequence Stratigraphy Analysis

Poster presented in Miami (2017) at the 4th International Symposium on Bioremediation and Sustainable Environmental Technologies. An interesting former industrial lagoons area on the right bank (looking downstream) of the Susquehanna River in Enola, Pennsylvania. We used sequence stratigraphy to describe likely origin and flow paths for oily seeps that were occurring on the river bank. Subsequent trenching investigation confirmed the model.

Guide to Performing Remediation, Applying Remediation Geology: Two Case Studies

A fun tale moving along scale, and how zooming out can be useful before we zoom in for understanding the broader story of how the site is "constructed" and what that might imply about the way contaminants moved into the subsurface, and how that might hint at effective means of remediation. A manufactured gas plant site and and the Enola, Pennsylvania lagoons site on Norfolk Southern's Enola Yard are used as case study examples.

Distributed Temperature Sensing Technologies

This cool presentation was put together in 2022 by a friend and associate who was responsible for the design and installation of fiber optic temperature sending array into a streambed beneath a railroad yard in Conway, Pennyslvania. They weren't able to present, so I presented, which was great as I had managed the site as the "owner". Fascinating use of thermal differentials to differentiate the location of groundwater seeps into surface water - which are pathways for oil seepage into the surface water body.

Sustainable Remediation Program: Tiers, Tools, & Tests

A 2015 summary of the state of the establishment of the Norfolk Southern sustainable remediation program. The presenter, Ms. McNally, was integral to the development of the program. It was at a meeting at some conference or another that she and I sat in a coffee shop, and outlined on napkins what the sustainable remediation program would look like for the railroad.

RREC Poster NS Rev3 FINAL.pdf

Novel Use of Metadata Derived from UV Fluorescence Soil Core Imagery

Image files generated using smartphones and digital cameras have loads of data within them. My colleague Mr. Harding struck upon the idea to examine the metadata for patterns that can be analyzed and used to guide discreet soil sampling location choices. He experimented with two methods, one a labor intensive image by image process of manually tabulating the luminosity, hue, and RGB values from image metadata. The other approach used software, originally developed to dental diagnostics, but adapted to convert gray-scale (total RGB) values from images of varved sediment deposits into plots used to define varve layers. Mr. Harding's conversion of gray scale value into plots that correlated with intensity of luminosity were indicative of patterns of LNAPL deposition throughout a soil core. Barry presented the observations at the Railroad Environmental Conference (RREC) in 2015..

Treatment Testing for the Herbicide Dicamba

In 2021, a train hit a flatbed trailer loaded with totes of herbicide used on soybean or cotton crops in the south. The two primary compounds, dicamba and acetochlor, were spilled when the totes flew off the flatbed trailer and were burst open on the ground adjacent to the railroad track. We did a bench study in late 2021 to examine some remedial treatment options and saw some interesting responses for the rather stout starting concentrations. I facilitate the use of this case study in an end-of-term classroom simulation setting for engineering students at Tufts University.

Pushing for Failure

As a presenter participant on an LNAPL workshop held virtually for the 37th International Conference in Soils, Sediments, Water, and Energy in 2021, I gave a light-hearted and light on substance presentation on the pressures and pitfalls of "premature remediation". Discussion used recent examples of communication from stakeholders concerning remedial action planning in situations where the conceptual site model clearly lacked completeness or the level of sophistication that would allow for good decision making moving into remediation.

Freeware: SketchUp for a CSM

To represent the geometry of a subsurface basement structure, specifically the Barney house at Norfolk Southern's Lambert Point coal doak, we settled on a quick, and at the time cost-free, application to render 3D models for quick conceptual site model visualization. The problem presented iteslf as lubricating oil seeps in the walls of the basement room adjacent to the Barney gear. The gear itself sat half submerged in a lubricating oil bath. Unfortunatley, this reservoir had corroded and the oil was seeping through the concrete basement wall of the adjacent room - a deeper basement room that contained the bottom end of the coal coveyor system. We presented the model concept on a poster at the Railroad Environmental Conference (RREC) in 2016.

Norfolk Southern Sustainable Remediation Program

One of my consulting team partners (Geosyntec) was tasked by me to demonstrate the use of the new Norfolk Southern sustainable remediation guidance at the beginning of remedial design planning. They were able to present the process as a poster at the Railroad Environmental Conference (RREC) in 2016.

The First Persulfate Project - Florida

In 2006, the first site in Florida to apply ISCO via activated sodium persulfate was my design for a site in retirement community called John Knox Village. Under a performance based contract, Earth Tech (the consulting engineering firm I worked at) was tasked to remediate a petroleum groundwater plume located at former vehicle maintenance facility. The plume originated from leaking underground service lines used to support a fleet of maintenance vehicles. The plume was delineated in 2000 and a bioremediation treatment strategy was selected to treat the mildly aerobic groundwater plume. However, aerobic conditions could not be optimally maintained without the

use of a biosparging system, and ethylbenzene and xylenes remained above regulatory standards. In addition, the maintenance facility was decommissioned in 2002 and a semi-residential medical facility constructed atop the site. The medical facility could not tolerate the operational noise and support maintenance activities of a biosparge system. As a result, we selected ISCO as an alternative remedial approach to address persistent ethylbenzene (40 - 130 ppb) and xylenes (380 – 1000 ppb) concentrations. Approximately 2,100 gallons of a 20% solution of sodium persulfate catalyzed with 2.5% w/v citric acid chelated ferrous iron sulfate solution was injected over a period of three days through nine injection points.

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