The Port of New York and New Jersey ranks
first in the United States in volume of petroleum products handled each year.
In addition, many refineries are in operation on the New Jersey side of the
Port. These activities have led to the discharge of significant amounts of petroleum
hydrocarbons into the waters of the New York/New Jersey region. Intense industrial
and commercial activities have also brought about major inputs of other organic
and inorganic contaminants as would be expected in an industrialized, heavily
populated urban port. Sediments that then are contaminated are a major problem
for the region since they can no longer be disposed of by the traditional method
of ocean disposal following the dredging operations required for the efficient
operation of the Port. Decontamination and beneficial reuse of the dredged materials
is one component of a comprehensive dredged material management plan being developed
by the US Army Corps of Engineers. A demonstration decontamination project extending
from bench- to field-scale operations is now in progress in the Port, and its
current status and relevance for other regions is summarized.
Environmental effects resulting from petroleum consumption are diverse and must be considered for all steps in the chain starting with drilling and recovery from a reservoir and ending with use as fuel or chemical product. Minimizing environmental impacts is clearly an important goal, but it should also be recognized that minimizing the environmental impact of petroleum use will also have related benefits by improving the overall energy efficiency of the United States and thereby reducing overall energy consumption. The purpose of this paper is to describe a project to show that it is possible to clean dredged material from the Port of New York / New Jersey at an acceptable cost and to dispose of the end material in an environmentally responsible way. Funding for the demonstration has been provided through the Water Resources Development Acts (WRDA) of 1990, 1992, 1996, and 1998.
The need for the demonstration was brought about by the introduction of more stringent regulations governing the disposal of dredged material from the Port of NY / NJ. These regulations ultimately led to a ban on ocean disposal of sediments that did not pass certain testing for sediment toxicity and bioaccumulation tests in selected marine organisms. Since approximately 3- to 4,000,000 cubic yards of material are dredged each year to maintain channel depths and approximately 75% of this total does not pass the more stringent criteria, a major operational problem has resulted. Further, the shipping industry is introducing a new generation of container ships that require much deeper channels. Channel deepening projects must be carried out to meet regional demands, and new alternatives are needed for disposing of the dredged material generated. Decontamination of the sediments and conversion to a beneficial reuse can offer at least a partial solution to the problem. The WRDA dredged material decontamination project (1-19) is validating and bringing suitable technologies into commercial use.
The demonstration, while being carried out in the Port of NY / NJ has national significance through the entire country. If viewed narrowly in terms of the specific project mission the goal is only to provide part of a solution to management of dredged material in the Port. A broader statement is that it is one part of a search for ways to optimize the efficiency/minimization of energy consumption for much of the eastern seaboard of the United States. Thus, it is an important building block for operation of the urban centers in the region. The Department of Energy is rightly concerned with the environmental problems directly related to the production of petroleum. It is clear that environmental problems of concern to the Department should also include the problems related to transport and use as well. Our decontamination demonstration brings together a collaboration of the US Environmental Protection Agency - Region 2 (EPA), the US Army Corps of Engineers - New York District (ACE), and the US Department of Energy - Brookhaven National Laboratory (DOE-BNL) all of whom have specific strengths and interests at stake.
The impact of petroleum-related activities on the Port can be established quantitatively. The volumes of petroleum passing through the top ten oil ports in the United States are listed in Table 1. New York is the leading port in the country and carries more than three times the volume than does the number two port, Houston. New York is responsible for 38.6% of the total for all ports. Changes in the shipping patterns to New York could affect the distribution of petroleum products in the region and have unforeseen effects on energy efficiency and the environment which could have either positive or negative impact.
A direct impact on the local environment results from discharges into the harbor waters that come from sources that include storage tank and pipeline leakage, fuel transfer spills , combined sewer overflows, and other point and non-point sources. Crawford et al. (20) listed the discharges into Newark Bay where a major port of the shipping to the Port docks in Port Newark and Port Elizabeth. Table 2 shows volumes of petroleum products and hazardous chemicals released from October 1986 to 1991 and the volume for 1991 alone. Table 3 gives a breakdown of the production and release of industrial chemicals through publicly owned treatment works (POTWS) and to surface water. Table 4 shows the percentage contributions from different types of sources. It can be seen from the work of Crawford et al. that petroleum products and petrochemicals are of major importance in contamination of the Harbor sediments. It is also obvious that the contamination is of major magnitude and that sediments in the harbor in general can be expected to contain heavy metals, polynuclear hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), insecticides, etc. The concentrations are high enough, as mentioned above, to make approximately 75% of the dredged material in the Harbor unacceptable for unrestricted disposal in the coastal Atlantic Ocean.
The status of the WRDA decontamination project is
summarized in the following sections. The experience gained in the Harbor is
transferable to other areas with significant petrochemical industries such as
the Mississippi River around New Orleans and the Houston/Galveston region. A
similar decontamination demonstration in the State of New Jersey is in progress
under the auspices of the New Jersey Commerce and Economic Growth Commission,
and in Michigan by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the
US Environmental Protection Agency - Region 5 with a program intended to clean
sediments in waterways around Detroit. Many of the technologies considered have
already gone through testing in NY/NJ.
The ultimate goal of the WRDA project is to create decontamination facilities that can process dredged material at a rate of 500,000 cy/y. This goal must be reached in a timely way so that decontamination procedures are a meaningful part of the overall comprehensive dredged material management plan for the Harbor. The stipulation that it is necessary to perform the work as rapidly as possible made it necessary to focus on technologies which could be put into operation without carrying out an extensive research program. On the other hand, turn-key facilities do not exist so that some research and development activity is an ineluctable part of the effort.
In order to meet these requirements a conservative path was chosen. The initial steps were to carry out testing at the bench scale (5 gallons), pilot scale (2-20 cy), operational scale (10,000-100,000 cy/y), and full scale (500,000 cy/y) levels. This ramp-up sequence is advantageous since it demonstrated the efficacy of the decontamination procedure and also identified problems to be solved in putting together a large treatment facility prior to making commitments to a specific design that had not been adequately tested. The sequential testing procedure made it possible to evaluate results from each step and then make a selection of the technologies to be given further consideration based on the results and the level of WRDA funding.
Selection of vendors was made through a full-scale
request for proposals (RFP). It was desired to make funding selections
from as wide a base of technologies as possible. An important consideration
was that the chosen technologies could be moved to productive operations
easily. Approximately 150 bid packages were sent to companies responding
to the RFP. A total of 25 formal proposals were ultimately received and
evaluated by a review panel of scientists and engineers from Brookhaven,
EPA, ACE, and universities. Seven technologies were selected for the bench-scale
testing. Other tests were performed by the Army Corps of Engineers Waterways
Experiment Station (WES).
The technologies tested in the bench-scale work (5 gallons) are as follows:
US Army Corps of Engineers, Waterways Experiment Station (WES). Manufactured soil: created by addition of compost (yard waste), and other materials such as cellulose and biosolids (cow manure) to the as-dredged sediment. Contaminant concentrations are reduced through dilution by the additives.
WES, International Technology Corporation, Marcor, and Metcalf & Eddy. Solidification/stabilization (S/S) by addition of Portland cement, fly ash, lime and/or proprietary chemicals to create solid aggregates.
BioGenesis. Sediment washing using a proprietary blend of surfactants, chelating and oxidizing agents, and high pressure water jets to remove both organic and inorganic contaminants. The decontaminated product can be used to produce a manufactured soil with the WES approach or with proprietary mixtures.
Metcalf & Eddy. Solvent extraction using organic chemicals at an elevated temperature.
Battelle Memorial Institute. Base-catalyzed decomposition. This is a two-stage process combining thermal desorption with a catalyst to dehalogenate chlorinated compounds.
International Technology Corporation. Thermal desorption: uses heat to remove surface contaminants. The temperatures used are not high enough to destroy the organic compounds. Metals are not treated per se.
BioSafe. High temperature thermal destruction of organic compounds in a fluidized bed reactor.
Institute of Gas Technology/ENDESCO. High temperature thermal destruction of organic compounds using a natural gas fired melter. Metals are reduced in the end product by reason of loss to gaseous side streams and by dilution with cement-forming additives. The remaining metals are incorporated in the cementitious matrix.
Westinghouse Science and Technology Center. High temperature thermal destruction of organic compounds in a plasma torch. Metals are reduced by dilution with glass- forming additives. The remaining metals are incorporated in the glassy matrix.
The evaluation of the bench-scale test results lead to the selection of four projects for evaluation at the pilot-scale level of 2 - 20 cy. Each of the choices represent a treatment train for processing of the dredged material through a series of steps from the initial dredging to a final beneficial reuse. The demonstrations were:
WES. Manufactured soil
BioGenesis.
Institute of Gas Technology/ENDESCO.
Westinghouse Science and Research Center.
The pilot-scale work included the successful
treatment of the larger volume of sediments, the conceptual design for
treatment facilities that could process 100,000 to 500,000 cy/y of dredged
material, and indicated a beneficial use for the material following treatment.
Results obtained for decontamination removal are shown in Table 5 for BioGenesis,
Institute of Gas Technology/ENDESCO, and Westinghouse. The reductions for
the WES manufactured soil test are about 70%. All of these technologies
were found to merit consideration for development at the field-scale level.
The status of the field-scale projects is presented in the next section.
Several field-scale demonstrations are now
in progress. Each one will comprise a complete treatment train for the
contaminated dredged material. That is, the project team will dredge the
material, carry out pre-treatment steps to remove large debris and possibly
dewater the material, remove contaminants, prepare a final product for
beneficial reuse, and then sell the product in the open market place. The
technologies chosen include the low temperature BioGenesis sediment washing
procedure and the high temperature treatments by the Institute of Gas Technology
and Westinghouse.
BioGenesis is now in the field at a temporary site in Kearny, NJ. This site is presently undergoing brownfield remediation. They are setting up a complete sediment-washing facility that can process 8 cy/hr that will be used to treat approximately 300 to 500 cy of sediment taken from a dredging site in Newark Bay. This test is scheduled for completion by the end of February 1999. Following the successful completion of this work, the equipment will be moved to another site with water access and used to treat 10,000 cy or more of dredged material. Present schedules call for an equipment upgrade which will bring processing capacity to 40 cy/h by the latter part of 1999. Work on market development for the manufactured soil beneficial use product is now in progress so that a complete treatment train can be in operation at that time.
The Institute of Gas Technology and its subsidiary, ENDESCO, are now negotiating for a demonstration site in New Jersey. At the same time the fabrication of a rotary kiln facility designed specifically for this project is in progress. The kiln will be able to process approximately 30,000 cy/y of dredged material in its original configuration. Additional equipment can be added to reduce the moisture content of the material going into the kiln that should yield even higher through puts. The beneficial use of the product as cement has already been established with several cement distributors and end users. This facility will be ready for initial testing by the summer of 1999.
Westinghouse is presently completing a demonstration
of the feasibility of converting the vitrified material product that results
from their process into glass tile. This is not merely to show that tile
can be produced from the material. That has already been done. Rather,
several tons of the vitrified harbor dredged material will be used in a
production run at an actual tile manufacturing facility. The results of
the test will be used to show that it is truly feasible to use the material
in an operational facility devoted to tile manufacture. The next step in
this part of the project is to develop a team that incorporates the Westinghouse
vitrification technology with a partner who will be concerned with the
end use as a glass product. The time scale for this is not now clear.
The work carried out under during the WRDA demonstration project has been successful in showing that decontamination technologies can perform successfully and at estimated costs which are far below those estimated from previous test projects.
Work supported in part by the US Department
of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886 and Interagency Agreements,
funded through the Water Resources Development Acts of 1992 and 1996, between
the US Environmental Protection Agency (No. DW89941761-01-0), the US Army
Corps of Engineers (No. NYD-94-39(C)), and the US Department of Energy. The
authors thank Lore M. Barbier for her editorial assistance and preparation
of the manuscript for publication.