Laboratory investigations to prove low concentrations of hydrocarbons in soils

The most ecological way to clean soils from organic contaminants is biological remediation. In addition to chemical analyses, geophysical measurements are an useful instrument to monitor the remediation process. Geophysical measurements can provide information of three-dimensional distributions for several parameters, e.g. temperature and resistivity (related to salt and moisture content), which are interesting for the remediation process. In a project supported by the Centre for Environmental Research Leipzig - Halle the possibilities to detect low concentrations of hydrocarbons in soils with geophysical measurements are investigated. The laboratory study is focussed on the speetral induced polarization (SIP) method. Additionally, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements are carried out in order to understand petrophysical processes influencing electrical spectra.