Study and Application of Techniques for Remediation of Areas Contaminated by Petroleum Hydrocarbons

The large-scale use of oil and its by-products as a source of energy has provoked a growing demand to stock it up into skillful points for its distribution, so fuel stations around the world have begun to emerge. The negative impact of this uncontrolled growth was pollution of soil and water resources due to this irregular storage with insufficient materials, processes and safety measures.

This work was developed in two stages, in the first one the technical literature was analyzed for the solution of the problem, where two techniques were evidenced, namely:

1. Multiphasic removal - Removing (not necessarily dispatching) the contaminated water, where we can already split it into a low contaminated part and a persistent agents contamined part;
2. Bioremediation - At this stage are added nutrients (Mono ammonium phosphate, ammonium sulfate and calico hydroxide) for the local biological agents to counter the persistent Hydrocarbons (BTEX`s, PAH`s and HTP`s), into the most contaminated part of the collected waters .

Secondly, these techniques were applied to a site contaminated by petroleum hydrocarbons in the municipality of Estância de Socorro, in the interior of the state of São Paulo - Brazil. This application was carried out in two stages, the first one started in 2010 and ended in 2013, the multiphasic removal technique was used, where most of the contaminants were removed and the process was interrupted, but not the monitoring. In the year 2014, it was observed that some contaminants still persisted and it was decided to apply the technique of induced bioremediation at the site, during the period from 2014 to 2017, when the analyzes of the groundwater showed the disappearance of the other contaminants. Monitoring of the efficiency of Bioremediation was carried out through sampling campaigns, with a semiannual periodicity.

This work aims to show the technical and economic feasibility in the removal of the contaminants studied, as well as to encourage the practice of the processes used.