Innovation & Technology Group, Kuwait Oil Company, PO Box 9758, Ahmadi, 61008, Kuwait; School of Science, Engineering and Environment, University of Salford, Greater Manchester, M5 4WT, United Kingdom.
School of Science, Engineering and Environment, University of Salford, Greater Manchester, M5 4WT, United Kingdom; International Envirotech Limited, Hong Kong, China; School of Geography, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China.
J Environ Manage. 2023 Oct 15;344:118601. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.118601. Epub 2023 Jul 14.
The Kuwaiti oil fire during the first Gulf War resulted in the formation of approximately 300 "oil lakes" of varying sizes that covered over 110 km of the desert land. This threatens the fragile desert ecosystems and human health. Following the award of over US$2 billion to the State of Kuwait by the United Nations, large-scale remediation of the oil-contaminated soils has now been on the agenda. However, how to implement the remediation program in a cost-effective way represents a major challenge. In this study, cost-effective remediation strategies were developed based on field and laboratory investigations in a typical oil lake area. Overall, most of the lighter petroleum hydrocarbons (PHCs) were lost due to evaporation. Long-chain aliphatic PHCs dominated the PHCs in the investigated oil lake area. This has implications for developing remediation strategies. Toxicity assessment results showed that the majority of soils pose a low environmental risk with a hazard index <1. Therefore, intensive treatment of these PHCs may not be necessary for these soils. Although active treatment methods are needed to remove the contaminants as soon as practical for the relatively small areas of high contamination, more cost-effective passive methods should be considered to minimize the remedial costs for the larger area of the non-hotspot areas. Given the extremely low risk in terms of groundwater contamination by the contaminated soils, it may not be necessary to remove the soils from the contaminated sites. A low-cost capping method should be sufficient to minimize human exposure to the PHC-contaminated soils.
第一次海湾战争期间科威特油田大火导致形成了大约 300 个大小不一的“油湖”，这些油湖覆盖了超过 110 公里的沙漠土地。这威胁到脆弱的沙漠生态系统和人类健康。在联合国判给科威特 20 多亿美元之后，大规模修复受污染土壤的工作已提上日程。然而，如何以具有成本效益的方式实施修复计划是一个主要挑战。在本研究中，基于典型油湖区的实地和实验室调查，制定了具有成本效益的修复策略。总体而言，由于蒸发，大部分轻质石油碳氢化合物（PHC）流失了。长链脂肪族 PHC 是调查油湖区 PHC 的主要成分。这对制定修复策略具有重要意义。毒性评估结果表明，大多数土壤的危害指数<1，因此，这些土壤中这些 PHC 不需要进行强化处理。尽管对于污染程度较高的小面积区域，需要采用主动处理方法尽快去除污染物，但对于非热点区域的大面积区域，应考虑更具成本效益的被动方法，以尽量降低修复成本。鉴于受污染土壤对地下水污染的风险极低，可能没有必要将土壤从污染地点清除。低成本覆盖法应该足以最大限度地减少人类对 PHC 污染土壤的接触。
