Soil Clean Up by in-situ Surfactant Flushing. II. Theory of Micellar Solubilization

Mathematical models for describing the solubilization of various types of contaminants in micelles of ionic and nonionic surfactants are described. Contaminants which are purely hydrophobic compounds and those which are amphipathic are handled, and electrical effects are described by means of a Debye-Huckel theory approach. It is found that the concentration of contaminant solubilized is a linear function of the total surfactant concentration provided that this is above the critical micelle concentration of the surfactant, in agreement with experimental results.