Quality function deployment to determine the design requirements in experimental biopiles at bench-scale, evaluated as a resilient strategy for the degradation of oily waste

Abstract

Due to the increased amount of oil used, large volumes of hydrocarbons are released annually into the environment, constituting one of the main causes of soil pollution worldwide. The Center for Environmental Studies of Cienfuegos, Cuba, implemented an experimental project to develop an innovative technique that increases territorial resilience to this environmental problem. The goal was to implement the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to determine the design requirements of the experimental units to evaluate at the bench-scale during the degradation of oily residues through different treatments of biopiles ecotechnology. A 4-stage approach allowed for organizing the team, selecting the technology, adopting a QFD implementation procedure to translate the needs into engineering requirements, and disseminating the results. The concentrations of microorganisms, nutrients, and hydrocarbons in the biopile were the characteristics that accumulated more than 50% of the relative weights of the first level matrix. The initial concentration of hydrocarbons and the percentages of moisture and bulking agents in the mixture obtained the highest relative weights in the second level. The percentage of bulking agents in the biopile mixture was identified as an opportunity to reduce costs and improve the effectiveness of bioremediation. The results enabled the delineation of the experimental protocols for the engineering design, which allowed to build off a bench-scale prototype of the experimental units for evaluating various treatments of biopiles ecotechnology as a resilient alternative against soil hydrocarbon pollution.