Africa: Oil & Gas, Downstream in South Africa

  • MPE Pilot testing
  • South Africa
  • GeoStream Africa

Geostream Africa was appointed by a major environmental consultancy firm to execute some pilot tests of MPE in order to collect useful data for the feasibility study and preliminary design of a full-scale MPE remediation system.

Project Detail

SITE: Two sites impacted by hydrocarbon spills 
COMMISSIONING: 2020

Project Scope

Geostream Africa was appointed by a major environmental consultancy firm to execute some pilot tests of MPE in order to collect useful data for the feasibility study and preliminary design of a full-scale MPE remediation system.

The contamination was mainly fresh petrol at one site and diesel at the other one, caused by the rupture of an underground pipeline.

The shallow groundwater body and a wetland close by have been impacted with LNAPL. In total, 8 extraction wells were tested at each site over one-month period, extracting more than 3 m3 of water and LNAPL. Geostream’ s pilot unit recorded the process data in its PLC, while portable manometers measured the vacuum at the extraction well and at the nearest monitoring well.

High concentrations of VOCs were detected at the inlet of the activated carbon gas filter using a handheld PID.

For both sites the results of the tests (mass removal rates between 5-10 kg/day per well) demonstrated that MPE was one of most performing remediation technologies for the type of contamination and the site-specific hydrogeological setting.

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