Welcome to Phase II of the Surfactant Modified Zeolite Project .

A Pilot Scale Demonstration of an SMZ Permeable Barrier

This project was undertaken in cooperation with the Environmental Science and Engineering department at the Oregon Graduate Institute.

This phase of the project deploys a pilot-scale, permeable barrier to groundwater contamination using the surfactant-modified zeolite (SMZ) technology developed at NMT. The digital image at the top of this page is the permeable barrier in a synthetic aquifer at the Large Experimental Aquifer Program (LEAP) site at the Oregon Graduate Institute (OGI). The SMZ barrier is contained in the large yellow "box" in the center of the image. The barrier is 6 meters long, 2 meters deep, and 1 meter wide. This is a shot of the system prior to filling the entire tank (8.5 X 8.5 X 3.0 m deep) with aquifer material. The white "trees" seen as a "forest" throughout the tank are sample acquisition nests, there are 81 such nests in the system each with 5 distinct sampling levels. The LEAP site at OGI is designed to facilitate large-scale transport experiments by offering controllable aquifer flow regimes, high-density sample acquisition networks, onsite data analysis/storage/transfer, while maintaining a safe and containable contaminant delivery/storage system. All of these amenities are used in this project to build a reliable database for follow-on applications of SMZ as well as applications of permeable barriers in general.

Below are links to the permeable barrier information pages for this project. Generally, these links contain simple plan view and cross-section schematics of the system with some accompanying images.

BEWARE FALLING LINKS

• Barrier superstructure
• • General layout of the barrier frame
• Injection and extraction system
• • Contaminated and uncontaminated aquifer solution injection and extraction system and wells
• Sample network
• • Layout and design of sampling network and wells
• Water level monitoring
• • Layout and design of water level monitoring wells
• In-barrier chrome removal system
• • Design and arrangement of the chrome extraction solution injection and extraction wells
• Air sparge system
• • Design and construction of one of the in-barrier air sparge techniques on site
• Data

This is a plan view of the fully loaded system as it exists on the site. Above links lead to specific aspects of the system.

Funding for this project is provided by the Department of Energy