University of Western Ontario Developing Nanomaterials and Heat Treatments to Remediate Underground Contamination

University of Western Ontario is proposing underground using smoldering combustion, a slow burn similar to charcoal briquettes to clean contaminated soils.

Through a new Faculty of Engineering group called RESTORE (Research for Subsurface Transport and Remediation), this technology was recently patented to help clean up some of the hundreds of thousands of contaminated industrial and commercial land across North America, also known as brownfield sites.  

RESTORE researchers are also developing reactive nanometals for the remediation of source zone chlorinated solvents with a specific focus on clay permeable media systems.  Further the group is investigating the fate of engineered nanoparticles, including carbon nanotubes, in the subsurface.

Jason Gerhard, with fellow professors Denis O’Carroll, Jose Herrera and Clare Robinson, are moving out of the lab for several field trials this summer in the U.S. and Canada using STAR (Self-sustaining Treatment for Active Remediation).

  

“What we do is locate where the contaminants are in the subsurface and we start a very local and very small smoldering reaction.”

Gerhard speaking at the WORLDiscoveries Research Showcase Feb. 5 at the London Convention Centre, said, “Once that reaction starts it proceeds and can sustain itself, and will travel through the pathway of the contamination, destroying [it] as it goes.”

The process has the remarkable ability to be self-sustaining, self-tracking and once all contamination has been removed, is also self-terminating.

“It has some very unique properties and is a very exciting technology,” he says, noting late last year STAR received the 15th Lord Ezra Award for Innovation in Combustion Engineering from the U.K. Combustion Engineering Association.

With more than 30,000 brownfield sites across Canada, contamination is blocking re-development. These derelict locations hold excellent potential for redevelopment once cleaned up.

Through RESTORE, and with the help of more than two dozen graduate and post-doctoral students, innovative site remediation technologies are being developed to deal with hazardous industrial pollutants in soil and groundwater.

By using less energy, creating less waste, incurring less adverse environmental impact and being less expensive than current strategies, Gerhard is confident the process will reduce contamination and risk to human health.

“We’ve [humans] been making a mess for 80 to 100 years now and over the last 20 years we have been focusing on cleaning them up,” says Gerhard, Canada Research Chair in Environmental Restoration Technology.

“But for most of the major contaminants, we actually haven’t cleaned up perfectly - back to what the natural environment would have been - for one single site.”

Gerhard says many contaminants are highly resistant to natural dispersion and natural processes currently used to clean the sites. With $4.5 million in external funding, RESTORE is focused on “new and innovative technologies to help remediate some of the toughest, most difficult to clean up sites.”

“In engineering we are trying to find innovative ways to clean up these sites without bringing those contaminants to the surface and exposing people to those hazards to a further degree.”

Gerhard estimates that for every $1 spent restoring the environment, $4 will be returned to the economy through new revenue, redevelopment, new jobs, revitalization of urban communities and, most importantly, the health of Canadians.

Learn more about RESTORE ateng.uwo.ca/research/restore.