What benefit does the butane technology have when being used to treat low permeability soils?
A. Butane is the most soluble of the gaseous alkanes. It has more than four times the solubility of methane and twice that of propane. Butane is highly soluble in water. High solubility results in increased microbial access or bioavailability, which in turn results in high cell densities in both the soil and groundwater. The butane and air is mixed into the subsurface in the vapor phase using a series of injection points. The use of a vapor-phase remedial additive increases the ability of the butane and air to become a dissolved phase component of the groundwater and to become bioavailable to indigenous microbial populations. This process is more effective in low permeability soils than remedial technologies such as in-situ oxidation or bioaugmentation due to the difficulties in mixing a liquid into the saturated zone of an aquifer and ensuring that the remedial additive is able to migrate into areas of the subsurface where the contamination is located.
