Reducing Operations and Maintenance Costs with Horizontal Remediation Wells

By: Tomas Will, Sr. Environmental Technical Scientist

A common frustration with many projects is the waiting period it takes for your remediation system to complete the job, which can make you feel like you and your client are missing out on the payoff from your hard work. 

We believe you should get to see results from your remediation system as quickly as possible.  We understand that drawn-out site cleanups have a direct impact on budgets and client satisfaction. That is why we are dedicated to helping our clients achieve site closure sooner. Directional Technologies designs and installs horizontal remediation well systems that achieve faster site closure while at the same time minimizing long term costs that impact the budget such as operation and maintenance.

Horizontal remediation wells (HRWs) can achieve faster closer rates due to a number of factors. Here’s how:

• By design, horizontal wells have drastically greater contact with contaminated media compared to vertical wells. An HRW can be designed to have several hundred feet of direct screen contact with a contaminant plume, allowing for more effective delivery of the remediation strategy.

• Using proprietary software, Directional Technologies can design horizontal well screens that are engineered to take into account site-specific conditions such as lithology, desired injection or extraction rates, and pressure changes over the length of the screen interval. No two sites are the same, and therefore no two screen designs should be the same.

When sites achieve closure faster, there are many immediate benefits.  There also exist O&M cost-saving opportunities associated with some of the secondary benefits of HRWs. Here’s how:

• The installation procedures for HRWs can often streamline the O&M process. Due to the way multiple HRWs are installed using a common entry pit, remediation system infrastructure can be much more easily consolidated. Conduit lines to tanks, pumps, and blowers can be minimized when the wells that make up a remediation system tie into a single area instead of being spread out over large distances.
• Fewer wells and system components translates to fewer resources necessary to conduct O&M. A single HRW can replace 5 or more vertical wells, reducing the overall points of failure and streamlining the remediation system. In the case of medium-to-large size projects, it may not be practical to have the remediation equipment necessary to run multiple vertical wells at the same time. Horizontal wells can consolidate the number of wells and infrastructure, making it easier to design a remediation system that can operate multiple wells simultaneously.
• And, of course, we have to state the obvious, the sooner a site achieves closure, the sooner you and your client can stop worrying about O&M expenses. 

The benefits of streamlining and fast-tracking your remediation efforts through Horizontal Remediaiton Wells provides multiple opportunities to save cost on operations and maintenance.

Could your upcoming projects benefit from faster site closures and reduced O&M costs by using HRWs? Call our Horizontal Remediation Well experts at 1-877-788-4479 to discuss your current project needs.