The objective of this research was to develop a remediation analysis tool which can accommodate a sequence of remedial actions applied ex-situ to an encapsulated contaminated soil pile. The approach is based on the remediation of a soil pile holding the contaminated soil, which has been excavated from its original site, placed on a bottom liner system and encapsulated. The liner system will contain and isolate the soil and provide ports for controlling air and water flows into and out of the soil. Once the pile has been constructed and encapsulated, the contaminated soil can be remediated by applying a sequence of remediation treatments such as vapor extraction, bioremediation, soil washing. Any of these processes may be improved by thermal enhancement.

A fluid flow model to simulate gas and liquid flows in an out of the encapsulated soil pile was developed. Once flows are known, a single convective, dispersive mass transport (CDMT) module is implemented to provide a basis for more sophisticated CDMT modeling. A multicomponent, convective, dispersive, bio-reactive and sorptive mass transport mode was developed to track the fate of organic contaminants undergoing aerobic or anaerobic metabolism. The bioremediation module simulates the impact of bio-reactive and chemically interactive species.

A thermal enhancement module was also developed to analyze the impact of ambient temperature at the surface of the encapsulated soil pile and to predict how engineered heat sources would impact temperatures within the domain. The soil heating profiles can then be used to enhance the other remediation processes.

The ultimate goal of this work is to create a software package that will help remediation engineers analyze the potential merits of an ex-situ remediation approach by analyzing combinations of process sequences and process operations to achieve the desired remediation goals at low cost. The modules presented in this work are subprograms of the final analysis tool, and provide a complete set of modules for analyzing bioremediation.