Page 16 - M1-12 Ops Manual McMurdo 2016

Attachment A McMurdo Infrared Ops - 2016
Ops Schedule: Opera ons need to commence at the absolute earliest opportunity this season. Even if the soils are s ll frozen, lets ask eet ops if they are able to chop/break up the soil with the exca- vator. It is a minimal amount of soils (probably about 50 cubic yards) thatwillneedthispriortosummercondi ons. Someone(maybeJim Gibbons) will need to coordinate this with eet ops in advance.
Pre & Post treatment Field Screening: Hexane (liquid) can be used as a simple eld screening method to indicate the exi- stance of petroleum hydrocarbons. A small amount of soil can be placed in a glass vial (approx 5 dram in size) and the vial is lled half with soil and then lled the rest of the way with the hexane. The vial is shaken for 10-20 seconds and then set on a stable surface. If the hexane con nues to be clear, the soil is most likely non-detect
Infrared technician should immediately u lize a thermocouple pro- be to test and log the soil sample temperature. If the temperature is adaquate, the sample can be analyzed by the lab. Ini ally, we would like to see this temperature at or above 550 F.
2. An alternate method of sample extrac on is via stainless steel mesh burritos. Prior to tre- atment, contaminated soils (about 2-3 cups) are placed inside a stainless steel mesh toforma“burrito”. The p(2 wires twisted together 7 twi- sts) of a thermocouple wire is embedded within the burrito with the opposite end of the wire reaching to the outside of the Infrared unit. The burrito is bu- ried with the rest of the soil during loading (see a ached diagram). The burrito’s temperature is monitored throughout the treatment cycle. Once the burrito has reached at least 550F, the burrito can be
extracted and sent to the lab for analysis.
Lab sampling: It would be very helpful to know what metho- dology is being u lized by the lab at McMurdo to analyze the treated materials. To maximize soil throughput for the season, a quick turn around on post-treatment samples is really necessary in order to fa- cilitate NO FAILED BATCHES.
No Batch Shutdown Without Reaching Cleanup Criteria: There is no reason to shutdown or empty a batch of soil un l the lab has con rmed that it is clean. This will eliminate the possibility of any failures.
Operator / Treatment Logs: We need to have uniform te- chniques between Infrared unit operators. The best way to acheive this is by requiring a log sheet for each batch of soil treated by the In- frared. Thelogsheetsaresimpleandprovideastartdate,soiltemps throughout the process, and batch end me/date. Every batch ne- eds to be logged for soil and opera ng temperatures and any ope- ra onalissues. Logsheetsfor2016willbeprovidedtoJimGibbons.
Stainless mesh burrito
5 dram vial
or below 100ppm. If the hexane shows a yellow or brownish nt, this indicates that hydrocarbons are s ll present.
This is a rudimentary test method but it’s very quick and does provide useful results. Jim Gibbons has con- rmed that the lab at McMurdo has hexane available. This method can
be applied, once the Infrared Technician veri es that soil temperatu- res are adaquate. Without shu ng down the infrared, test samples can be extracted from the two 4” sample ports at the back end of the Infrared unit. A split spoon hand auger will t through the sample ports.
Sample Temperature/Results Correlation: In order to avoid any batch failures, we need to employ a process that measu- res the exact temperature of the post-treatment samples that go to the lab for analysis. This can be done a couple di erent ways:
1. The post-treatment soil sample can be extracted from the 4” sample ports and placed in a stainless steel bowl or container. The extracted soils should equal a mimimum of a quart in volume. The
16