Green Remediation Focus
BP Paulsboro
Paulsboro, New Jersey
NJ Voluntary Cleanup
Cleanup Objectives: Remove petroleum products and chlorinated compounds from soil and groundwater.
Green Remediation Strategy: Use solar energy resources to partially power remediation systems, while making productive use of adjacent land unsuitable for the area's anticipated redevelopment. Implementation of the strategy has involved:
- Installing a 275 kW solar field encompassing 5,880 ground-mounted photovoltaic (PV) panels collectively connecting to the site's internal electricity grid
- Siting the solar field on a third-party owned, closed/covered gypsum landfill area that could not otherwise be used for industrial/commercial purposes
- Using solar field-supplied electricity to operate (1) a groundwater pump and treat (P&T) system with 8 recovery wells extracting 225 gallons per minute; (2) air and ozone sparge systems with associated soil vapor extraction (SVE), and (3) light non-aqueous phase (LNAPL) recovery systems employing dual-phase extraction and product skimming; groundwater is transferred into a biologically activated carbon treatment system, soil vapors are routed to thermal oxidizer and carbon treatment systems, and recovered LNAPL is transferred to temporary holding tanks
Results:
- Producing approximately 200,000 kWh of electricity each year from a renewable energy source, which meets 5-10% of the remediation systems' annual electricity demand
- Generated a total of 1,879,000 kWh of electricity during the first 10 years of PV system operation, effectively increasing capacity of the electricity grid by an equivalent amount
- Avoiding carbon dioxide (CO2) emission of more than 300,000 pounds per year, resulting in a total CO2 avoidance exceeding 3 million pounds over 10 years
- Avoiding more than 800 pounds of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and 500 pounds of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emissions per year, resulting in a 10-year total avoidance of NO2 exceeding 5,900 pounds and SO2 exceeding 8,500 pounds
- Gaining long-term productive use of the offsite landfill area as onsite remediation continues
Property End Use: Deep water port on the Delaware River
Point of Contact: Sasa Jazic, BP
Update: April 2014