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(50-11) Life Cycle Assessment of Innovative Groundwater Remediation Technologies. Heuer, Edda*,1, Karl, Ute1, Rentz, Otto1, 1 University of Karlsruhe, DFIU, Karlsruhe, Germany ABSTRACT- Technologies for the remediation of contaminated sites aim at removing pollutants from the environment or stopping their diffusion. But the remediation technologies are also related to environmental costs caused by energy and material consumption during the construction, operation and dismantling. Thus it is important to keep the balance between environmental benefits of remediation and costs when a suitable technology is to be chosen. The target of our research is to compare the environmental costs of passive technologies for groundwater remediation - especially permeable reactive wall systems - to those of the conventional pump&treat. The investigated permeable reactive wall systems are developed in the framework of the joint research project SAFIRA (SAnierungsForschung In Regional kontaminierten Aquiferen). An LCA-method based on ISO 14040ff was used to evaluate the environmental impact of the different remediation technologies. To ensure the comparability of these technologies a scenario analysis was realised. Several site scenarios are created by the variation of geological and hydrogeological parameters and by assuming different contaminants with different concentrations. A groundwater model and degradation respective sorption functions are implemented as tools for the dimensioning. The investigated technologies are dimensioned on the basis of these scenarios whereas a default remediation target value must be reached. First results show that the main part of the environmental costs of remediation technologies using activated carbon are related to the supply and the reactivation of this material. Systems which use the activated carbon more effectively have significant environmental advantages. The comparison of reactive walls with pump&treat shows that the running time of the remediation is an important factor as the environmental impact of a reactive wall is high during the construction phase and low during the operation phase in contrast to pump&treat. Key words: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), groundwater remediation technology, scenario analysis |
