The applicability of electrical current based treatment for the remediation of different types of polluted soils contaminated by organic compounds

Environmental pollution is considered a serious problem in Europe, and it has been regulated by several directives and regulations, with the purpose to limit the amount of pollutants that reaches the environment. Five years ago, on the 1st of January 2007, Romania became one of the European Union members. In the next years Romania had to comply and apply with the EU directives in all areas but especially in the field of the contaminated sites. Presently the Romanian regulations regarding the contaminated sites are not very developed and must be enhanced. In this paper, a PhD research is presented. In the frame of a co-supervised doctorate, in 2007 an international scientific collaboration between the Politehnica University of Bucharest and the University of Trento, Italy, was signed in order to go on with the development of studies on remediation technologies for contaminated sites. The idea started from the need, especially, of the Romanian side, to identify alternative treatments for soils polluted mainly with petroleum products. The main objective of this paper is to present the results regarding the effect of electrochemical treatment applied on the contaminated soil. Three types of matrix and two types of contamination were tested.