SWE has been reported for the remediation of organic pollutants
such as PCBs [8], pesticides [9] and PAHs [10–13] from contaminated
soils. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are among
most common and major classes of organic environmental pollutants
[14]. PAHs are micro pollutants that because of their toxicity
and their mutagenic properties have been listed as priority pollutants,
and because of their hydrophobic nature, PAHs are highly
resistant to environmental degradation [12,15]. Because of their
persistence in the environment through contamination of water,
soils and sediments, remediating these pollutants is important [2].
However, the remediation of PAHs contaminated soil by extraction
using superheated water for commercial applications has not been
sufficiently studied.
In this research work, a dynamic superheated water extraction
process in lab-scale was carried out for soil remediation from some
frequently encountered PAHs such as naphthalene, phenanthrene,
anthracene and pyrene. Two factors including water temperature
and extraction time were selected to investigate the extraction process.
The second aim is to introduce modifications to the model
described in our previous work [13] to describe the behavior of
superheated water extraction system and to simulate the remediation
of contaminants from soil