The front gate of Camp Market in Bupyeong, west of Seoul. (Yonhap)
INCHEON, Feb. 5 (Korea Bizwire) — The heat desorption cleanup method has been found to be effective in removing dioxins or dioxin-like chemicals, known carcinogens, from contaminated soil inside the U.S. military base in Incheon.
Following a yearslong delay caused by gaps with the South Korean government on decontamination procedures, the U.S. returned four bases here including parts of Camp Market in Bupyeong, Incheon.
A consortium led by Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co. has moved about 100 tons of complex contaminated soil to temporary buildings installed in the zone since November of last year and verified whether dioxins were removed via the process of thermal desorption.
Hyundai E&C has been selected to clean up pollution at the Camp Market.
The thermal desorption method includes burning dioxins by placing heat rods that reach temperatures of more than 1000 degrees Celsius in contaminated soil.
The method was adopted based on the idea that soil and dioxins would be separated if more than 330 degrees of heat were transferred to contaminated soil.
Experiments have shown that dioxins detected in soil that has been purified by heat desorption methods were measured at less than 100 picograms (pg-TEQ/g: one-trillionth of a gram), the standard applied to childhood playground soil in Europe.
The Ministry of National Defense plans to start cleaning up contaminated soil at Camp Market after conducting design procedures, as heat removal has been shown to be effective.
Earlier, the Ministry of Environment conducted a pollution assessment of soil at the base and found that seven of the 33 survey sites had dioxins exceeding the 1,000 picograms permitted by advanced countries such as Germany.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
