Page 233 - Environmental Control in Petroleum Engineering

Remediation of Contaminated Sites 219

important to include all of the data in the analysis. Using the lowest
measured concentrations and discarding the highest may be illegal.
The difficulty in obtaining reliable data for the composition of
contaminated sites was dramatically demonstrated through independent
studies conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and
the American Petroleum Institute (Holliday and Deuel, 1990). In these
studies, the same reserves pits, produced water pits, and production
facilities were independently sampled and analyzed by the two agen-
cies. As seen in Table 8-1, no correlation was found between the

Table 8-1
Correlation of Independent Measurements of Waste Composition
Constituent Pit Liquids Pit Solids Produced Water
Sodium Good Poor Good
Potassium Good None Good
Calcium Good Good Good
Magnesium Good None Good
Sum of cations Good — Good
Chlorides Poor None Good
Electrical conductivity — — None
Sodium absorption ratio — Good
—
Total suspended solids None — None
Arsenic None None None
Boron Poor None Good
Barium None Good Good
Chromium — Poor —
Copper — Good —
Lead __ None ___
Nickel ___ None
—
Zinc Poor —
—
Oil and grease Good None Poor
Total organic carbon None Poor Good
Napthalene None None None
Toluene None None Good
Ethylbenzene — None None
PH Good None None
Moisture content — None —
Source: after Holliday and Deuel, 1990.
Copyright SPE, with permission.