Pump and treat is a simple technique for remediating contaminated groundwater.  Pumps are used to bring contaminated groundwater to the surface where it can be remediated (treated) more easily.  Groundwater pollution can be either a dense non aqueous phase liquid (DNAPL) that will sink to the bottom of the aquifer e.g. chlorinated solvents or it can be a light non aqueous phase liquid (LNAPL) e.g. petroleum hydrocarbons that will float on the water surface.  The abstracted contaminated water is then passed through a treatment unit to ‘clean’ it sufficiently to allow either off-site disposal or discharge into a foul sewer under a licensed discharge consent.  MB Envirotech’s treatment systems are containerised to allow their unobtrusive deployment to site. 

A pump and treat groundwater system will rarely achieve the required remediation target alone but can be used in conjunction with Air Sparging, Soil Vapour Extraction or Oxidation technologies to achieve the remediation criteria.   More often than not the removal of the contaminant source will also be required prior to the installation of a pump and treat system to ensure that rapid closure of the project is achieved and MB Envirotech offer this service as part of a packaged remediation solution.

Dual Phase Pump & Treat

A slightly more sophisticated pump and treat solution for LNAPL utilises a dual phase system whereby the groundwater pumps are deployed at sufficient depth to recover relatively uncontaminated groundwater, pumping at a sufficient rate to create a cone off depression on the water table. A second skimmer pump is installed at the air/ water interface to skim off free product or light non aqueous phase liquid (LNAPL) thereby reducing the costs associated with treating large volumes of contaminated water.  Once this ‘free product’ has been removed then the remaining dissolved phase contamination could be remediated via one of our other solutions.

Please call or e-mail to discuss the applicability of this technique to one of your sites.