Separation of Oil Pollution Plumes of Groundwater in The Industrial Area of South Tehran

Due to the high volume of oil activities, there is a possibility of groundwater oil pollution, which requires extensive source identification, remediation, management and monitoring. In Rey industrial area, despite widespread oil pollution, the source identification of groundwater oil pollution has not been carried out before the present study, and previous studies were limited to exploration and extraction of petroleum products. The purpose of this study was to determine and separate the sources of oil spills to groundwater in the Rey industrial area. For this purpose, subsurface geology and hydrogeology of the region were studied by digging exploratory wells and data analyzing, and a conceptual model of the region was prepared. Then, all potential sources of pollutants and monitoring wells in the area were sampled and distillation and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and hydrogeological analyzes were performed. Based on the results of this study, five main contaminated plumes were identified. The research results show that if the contamination is single product, the distillation method is the fastest and cheaper method of identifying and separating the plumes of contamination. When the contamination is a combination of different compounds, the use of gas-mass chromatography analysis and different ratios of the compounds along with hydrogeological analyzes is required. The main leaks in the study area were from the transmission lines of petroleum products buried in the underground, which usually transport petroleum products with high pressure.