48    EVALUATION OF VOC EMISSIONS FROM LANDFARMING
OPERATIONS
Fernando Cadena, Associate Professor
Department of Civil Engineering
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico 88003
Donald J. Fingleton, Environmental Risk Engineer
Robert W. Peters, Environmental Systems Engineer
Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne, Illinois 60439
INTRODUCTION
Petroleum refinery wastes are generated from a variety of industrial processes. The wastes are
generally classified as solids, although they exhibit some fluid properties' and can be handled as a
pumpable fluid or slurry.2 A diverse group of organic compounds are associated with these wastes. In
addition, they have oil contents ranging from about 2% to 82% by weight while the water content can
range from 3% to 80%.3
Landfarming is a methodology for the controlled treatment of wastes in soil, which takes advantage
of such processes as biodegradation, volatilization, adsorption, and evapotranspiration for treatment
and ultimate disposal of waste materials. The physicochemical and microbiological properties of the
soil act to immobilize, transform, and degrade the waste. Although biodegradation is considered to be
the primary loss mechanism for certain organic compounds, the importance of the other factors
should not be neglected.
In landfarming, the wastes are spread onto a designated plot of land and cultivated into the soil
with farm equipment. In principle, organisms commonly found in soil feed on the organic waste,
breaking it down into carbon dioxide and water. The application process can be repeated many times
on the same plot. In addition to biological decay, pollutants can be volatilized and emitted to the
atmosphere, leached to lower strata and the groundwater, or adsorbed onto the soil.4,5 The volatile
organic compound (VOC) emissions thus generated during landfarming of petrochemical wastes have
come under scrutiny as sources of air pollution. This chapter compares two models used to estimate
VOC emissions from such area sources.
LANDFARMING OPERATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES
Landfarming of hazardous wastes is practiced in all major climatic regions of the United States.
However, it is most frequently used in the South, Southeast, and West where the warm climate allows
year-round operation. These areas coincide with the regions where the most frequent users of land-
farming, the petroleum industries, are concentrated.6
The petroleum refining industry has been using landfarming for various waste streams since the
early 1950s. A nationwide survey identified 197 landfarming facilities treating more than 2.45 x 109
kg of waste each year.6,7 Of these, over half were associated with the petroleum refining and production industry and accounted for over 70% of the land-treated waste. These figures compare favorably
with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's estimate of about 100 petroleum landfarming
facilities treating about 1.8 x I09 kg of waste.8
Operational characteristics of petroleum landfarming facilities are quite varied, as shown in Table
I. Facility size ranges over three orders of magnitude (from 2,000 to 2,400,000 m2), while the waste
quantity treated ranges over five orders of magnitude (from 2,700 to 470,000,000 kg/yr). Waste
quantity data, however, should be viewed with some skepticism. Brown and Associates6 caution that
the methods used by industry for reporting waste quantities are inconsistent and therefore contribute
to their uncertainty.
44th Purdue Industrial Waste Conference Proceedings, © 1990 Lewis Publishers, Inc., Chelsea, Michigan 48118.
Printed in U.S.A.
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