Soil venting and sparging

An in-situ technique which is used to move air through either the vadose (unsaturated) zone above groundwater, or under water.

With this technique, the injected air is doing two things; volatilising/stripping contaminants from the soil matrix (to be captured at the surface and treated) and stimulating biological activity to degrade chemical constituents in the ground (as for in-situ biotreatments). The technique is also referred to as biosparging, bioventing and soil vapour extraction (SVE); there are many proprietary ideas.