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Information About UFA Ventures, Inc. The Company |
Since the early 1990s a rapid growth in remediation technologies has occurred throughout the environmental industry. However, knowledge of the flow and transport properties of subsurface materials has not kept pace. Prediction of contaminant migration and successful remediation requires knowing the transport properties of units beneath a site as well as any engineered parts of the system. Most often, the only site specific transport data collected are porosity, saturated hydraulic conductivity, or other easily-measured properties. Extrapolations or estimations have been the usual recourse for the difficult-to-measure properties and conditions such as in highly unsaturated soils and rocks, relatively impermeable materials, or non-aqueous phase liquids.
These properties include hydraulic conductivity (K) or intrinsic permeability (ka), diffusion coefficient (D), matric potential (ψ), electrical conductivity (G), vapor diffusivity (Dv), distribution coefficient (Kd), retardation factor (Rf), dispersivity (α) and thermal conductivity (κ). All of these properties are strong, non-linear functions of the volumetric water content (θ).
Fortunately, a new technology, the UFA Method, rapidly and directly measures these properties in any porous media. The UFA Method is an ASTM Procedure (D 6527). This method and approved ASTM procedures are used at UFA Ventures, a small, women-owned business that is a full-service soil and rock testing lab and remediation company.
- UFA Ventures, Inc. can provide detailed, complete and cost effective characterization of subsurface and engineered systems by using the UFA Method in combination with other methods such as electrical conductivity, gas permeametry, or thermal probes.
- For example at one mixed waste disposal facility at the Hanford Site in Washington State, the UFA Method was used to develop hydrostratigraphic maps of the subsurface to determine distributions of flux below the site for targeting vapor extraction and bioremediation. Seven hundred unsaturated measurements along with pristine pore water extractions and CCl4 permeabilities were obtained in only six months using a single UFA Apparatus.
- At the Nevada Test Site, the UFA Method was used to determine changes in recharge rates into a nuclear chimney and their effect on downward transport of radionuclides. Over a thousand direct measurements of K(θ) and ψ(θ) were obtained using the UFA Method on individual core samples in less than six months.
- Other investigations have included studies on rocks, grout, and waste tank sludge, contaminated waste water, non-aqueous phase liquids, isotopically labeled waters as tracers, vapor and colloids.
- This technology is also useful in agricultural applications for optimizing microirrigation systems, land use planning and pesticide remediation.
- The UFA Method is excellent for determining optimal operating parameters of other technologies prior to field operations, e.g., testing nutrient formulas for in situ bioremediation; obtaining thermal, vapor and hydraulic conductivities for in situ heating and vapor extraction; measuring tank sludge waste behavior for mitigating waste tank safety issues; determining saturated and unsaturated retardation factors and leach rates of heavy metals, uranium and other actinides for emplacing permeable reactive barriers; engineered barrier testing, and measuring fluid conductivity for carbon tetrachloride, ethylene glycol and other organic fluids.
These types of direct measurements can provide defensible performance assessments and remediation strategies on schedule and have been accomplished at various DOE sites.
©1996-08 UFA Ventures Inc.
