A major university and the DOD wanted to develop a way to simulate conditions that might exist in an environmental remediation location such as a “Superfund site” or other contaminated water aquifer. They wanted to be able to reproduce the ground porosity and fluid hydrodynamics and be able to monitor the changing characteristics as remediation efforts were applied. This was done to better control the use and development of remediation methods to be used in the actual site or real world cleanup effort. PROTEC had to design and build a system that could accomplish this. We provided the system which is today being used for that application. The system consists of a tank containing a soil matrix with over a 100 sensors to sense a radioactive isotope introduced by an integral tank sparger and variable flow pump system. Process fluid characteristics were monitored via instrumentation located at an external control system with complex data logging equipment and interpretation software. The system was provided with an Instrument Building to provide a suitable environment for the scientist and their equipment. The success of the equipment generated a subsequent purchase for another unit to provide regional availability for both the eastern and western regions of the United States.
