| Authors |
Gimžauskaitė, Dovilė ; Aikas, Mindaugas ; Eimontas, Justas ; Uscila, Rolandas ; Žaltauskaitė, Jūratė ; Sujetovienė, Gintarė ; Dikšaitytė, Austra ; Tamošiūnas, Andrius |
| Abstract [eng] |
Soil pollution has significantly increased due to several factors, including the swift growth of urbanization, development of industrialization, modern agriculture, and unsustainable resource exploitation. Thus, the accumulation of myriad contaminants in the soil usually worsens soil quality and affects its health while simultaneously inducing threats to various ecosystems and living beings, including plants, animals, and humans [1, 2]. Accordingly, in seeking to protect living beings’ health and to maintain the environment’s ecological balance [3], it is necessary to remediate polluted soil as fast and smoothly as possible. Among the myriads of soil contaminants, petroleum products are recognized as one of the most essential organic-type pollutants. This tendency may be influenced by the fact that petroleum products remain the most used energy source globally. Correspondingly, accidental oil spills during disposal and transportation, the rupture of underground storage tanks or pipelines, or other accidents during crude oil processing cause this pollutant entry into the soil environment [4]. As a result, restoring petroleum-polluted soil has become an important topic. Removing petroleum products from the soil involves physical, biological, chemical, and thermal methods or combinations of these methods. Thus, this experimental research aimed to investigate the ability of the combined thermal desorption and thermal plasma methods to remediate diesel-polluted soil while converting diesel into lower hydrocarbons or gaseous compounds, thereby removing pollutants from the soil. |
