3. SAFETY MOMENT
Biological Hazards:
● Poison Ivy, Sumac, & Oak
● Tick bites
● Wasp and Bee stings
● Mosquito Bites
Preventative Actions:
• Spray painted all sightings of Poisonous plants
• Wore bug spray and tick repellent clothing/tick
gaiters regularly
• Always kept Tecnu in the trailer to wash oneself
after being exposed to a poisonous plant
• There was a wasp killer spray kept at each
barrier at Noranda
8. THE DUST MONITOR
● We learned how to calibrate, setup, and extract
data from the dust monitor
● The purpose of the Dust Monitor is to observe
the amount of dust traveling off site
● 0.15 mg/m3 is the action level for PCBs and
PAHs
20. HISTORY
● Noranda Metals Industries was a
facility where they made copper
heat exchangers
● Released TCE into subsurface
● Onsite plume traveled to off-site
wetland area
● Off-Site injection remediation is still
ongoing
26. PREPARING WELLS FOR
INJECTION - WELL REHAB
• To prepare for the start of new
wells, we purged and pumped
the wells
• Measured the recharge of each
well to help us predict how they
would preform
28. Thank you!
Thank you all for this incredible experience. We learned the values of safety,
communication, and teamwork. We are excited to see what doors this internship
opens for us.
QUESTIONS?
Editor's Notes
Was the largest, privately-owned turbine research facility in the world. Located on the bank of the Connecticut River at East Hartford. The company existed from 1950s-2005. Tests were conducted on full-scale experimental engines at simulated altitudes up to 76,000 ft at velocities up to three times the speed of sound while accurately controlling pressure and temperature. Besides pumping water from the connecticut river, most of their coolants resulted in PCB, NAPL, ETPH, and Mercury contaminants.
Before the construction began everyday, the dust monitor needed to be calibrated and set up nearest to the construction zone
Supplied GPS coordinates and map with dimensions E1 is called excavation and E2 and on are called step outs
Prior to excavation activities, excavation areas needed to be marked out using a GPS (spectra precision carlson gps)
It was vital that we met with the construction workers before they started excavating to confirm that the area marked out was clear and what needed to be dug was correct
TSCA GRID FOR PCBs, No Grid for PAHs
To start the gridding process we first needed to consult the VSAP, which was the verification sampling plan and provided us with the type of contaminants in that excavation and what kind of grid we needed to make (5ft, 10ft, how far down the side walls, etc)
Each sample need to use new pair of gloves and sample gets marked with excavation name, excavation number, sample number, depth of sample and time of sample (1 minute apart). 1 Duplicate for every 20 PCBs samples and 1 MSMSD (for quality control)
Samples that needed to be taken in excavations that fit the confined space criteria (were deeper than 6ft) needed to be taken with a hand auger
GPS each sample location + 1 duplication and the extents of the excavation It was also vital that we took a control GPS point everyday to ensure that our GPS points were accurate
We then had to PID each of our samples to test for VOCs. Each sample that was screened and had a concentration >1ppm needed to be recorded (why?)
Once all of the samples were taken, they were then labeled and refrigerated until the courier arrived.
A chain of custody is made to document all of the samples that are being shipped out. This Chain then has to be relinquished and signed by an aecom employee and the courier.
The necessary documentation that needed to be completed after each excavation was an excavation from which wrote out the description of the excavation, amount of samples taken, previously excavated samples, etc. And a field sketch which was an image to scale showing where each sample was taken along with the dimensions of the excavation.
Decon drill bit after every sample after every sample
Equipment Blank
And equipment blank is taken by pouring DI water over the drill bits and then poured into amber jars to ensure that our equipment isn’t contaminated. If it is, this might be what is causing our soil/concrete to have hits instead of contamination being in the soil.
Once the samples come back as non-detect or below standards, the excavations are backfilled with clean fill. Prior to this we had to sample top soil/fill for contamination. We test these for pesticides, herbicides, pH, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), metals, VOCs, SVOCs, ETPH (Extractable Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons, FOC (fraction of organic carbon)
They had poor housekeeping practices, which resulted in the release of TCE into the subsurface. There was an onsite plume that then traveled to the offsite wetland area which is where we worked this summer. The onsite portion was previously remediated and we are remediating the wetland with insitu bioremediation techniques.
The barriers are set up strategically to follow the direction of groundwater flow
Sodium sulfite lowers oxygen in water and nitrogen blanket takes oxygen out of air above water, EOS is the Carbon Source for Microbials, the microbials dechloronate TCE (which has three chlorines) down to ethylene (no chlorines)
Nitrogen gas is used to create a nitrogen blanket on the mix tank to ensure anaerobic conditions are maintained during batching
About a 6% water to eos ratio, we add vitamin B12 every day to eos mixture and once mixer is filled we add a nitrogen blanket.
While injecting the eos into the ground, it was important for us to monitor the flow rate, pressure, and overall quality and performance of the wells.
The first half of the day we would inject eos into the ground and the second half of the day we would inject freshwater. This “freshwater flush” helps the wells stay clean as eos can spoil within the interior of the well. It is also important that we are checking the stream that runs parallel to barrier four (it is an unamed tributary of the Pootatuck River). We want to make sure no eos is traveling outside of our site.
Target volume eos and target volume water
This way we can keep on top of the progress of each well and know when a well might be finishing soon
Breakthrough is something we are constantly looking out for. It is when there is eos on the surface of the land. It occurs when the mixture doesn’t have anywhere to go besides back up through the surface and is rejecting the injection essentially
Breakthrough becomes even more prevalent after heavy rain because the water table rises and the ground becomes more saturated, which I experienced this summer due to a flash flooding event
Sometimes the PLC malfunctions due to a flow meter failure. This happens when the paddle wheel stops spinning within the flow meter and can’t accurately read the flow rate. This can happen if the wheel gets dirty. In which case we clean it and reassemble that leg until the PLC begins reading properly.
In between injections we do well rehab to prepare for the start of new wells- we purge and pump the wells
We measure the recharge of each well to help us predict whether or not they will be good performing wells or not… would measure the depth to water after pumping, depth to bottom, and then depth to water 30 mins later to ensure the well is recharging
In between injections we also do leg calibrations
Due to the age of the equipment. It is common for the plc and flow meters to be off and therefore we need to find the proper multiplier to adjust to this and prevent error. This ensures that we are constantly recording the correct values for flow rates.
