China is now recognized as one of the most seriously eroded(water, wind erosion and desertification, as well as land contamination) countries in the world. Several manufacturing facilities, mainly from the chemical and steel industry, are moved out of the cities which left behind heavily contaminated sites for urban development. Further to this, China has a number of environmental challenges to address as part of its 12 th five-year plan, and contaminated land has been highlighted as an immediate priority. In Europe Union(EU), site remediation has been carried out for three decades and still over 1,000 km2 is subjected to ?land take‘ every year for industry, housing, roads or recreational purposes. Therefore, China and EU are potentially strong markets for contaminated site remediation and redevelopment services.We have more than 30 years of research on contaminated site remediation and we are now focusing on key indicator compounds based on their toxicity rather than the overall pollutant load in soil. There has been also acknowledged that we still need a better understanding of environmental chemical fate of pollutants and better integrated management framework for contaminated land. The clean-up and restoration of contaminated sites is further moving towards sustainable and green remediation, which means that not only remediation technical factors and performance are being considered, but also life-cycle costs and social and economic benefits. So, there are still some gaps that need to be further investigated:(1) the fate and transport of specific chemicals(risk indicator compounds) in different types of soil;(2) the influences of the remediation activities on the soil environment; and(3) the energy consumption and greenhouse gas(GHG) emission involved in the remediation.The aim of this thesis is to investigate the fate and transport of petroleum hydrocarbons in soils and to better inform remediation strategy. The objectives of this thesis are:(1) to study the leaching ability of petroleum hydrocarbons in chalk;(2) to investigate the effects of soil ozonation on the petroleum hydrocarbons affected soil;(3) to evaluate the influences of composting conditions on the petroleum hydrocarbons degradation; and(4) to estimate the energy consumption and GHG emissions during soil ozonation and composting.In Chapter 1, the contaminated site conditions in China and Europe, the fate and transport of contaminants in soil, and the soil remediation approaches have reviewed. Oil products are complex mixture of hydrocarbons and they can be found in various environmental matrices. Therefore the generic remediation approach is not always adequate and there is a need for a more mechanistic and site specific approach.Chapter 2 is investigating a specific site context, chalk which is the largest aquifer source in UK and is exposed to the petroleum hydrocarbons from the leaking underground storage tanks(USTs). So it is important to study the transport of aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbon fractions(mainly alkanes and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons(PAH) ranging between C10 and C35) in chalk subsoil. The influence of different chalk‘s particle sizes, on the behaviour of the hydrocarbon fractions was investigated using batch leaching column test. The key findings are both the aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbon fractions showed little tendency to transport downward and were mainly trapped in the top 10 cm layer after 60 days of leaching. Meanwhile, the concentrations of target alkanes and PAH compounds were below the lower detection limit(LDL) in the leachate samples. Additionally, the chalk-water distribution property of n-alkanes and PAH increases with the chalk particle sizes. Petroleum hydrocarbons fate and transport modelling in the soil indicate the 99% of the n-alkanes and PAHs were trapped within the soil system after 1000 days of leaching. The soil organic carbon content retarded the migration of petroleum hydrocarbons. Monte Carlo analysis demonstrate that environmental parameters uncertainties especially organic carbon content, water infiltration rate and initial mass of the hydrocarbons, greatly influence the transport of petroleum hydrocarbons(as high as 52%). These results show that the site contamination is not only related to amount of contaminants, but also depends on the physicochemical properties of contaminants and chalk. The low solubility and high distribution coefficient of the alkanes and PAHs indicate that is could be useful to reduce the deep located samples taken in contaminated site investigation and reduce the energy consumption correspondingly. Long period remediation approaches, such as monitored natural attenuation could be applied to clean up the petroleum hydrocarbons affected chalk.The leaking UST is one of the main environmental issues with the growing industrial development especially in China. In the following chapter, Chapter 3, the influences of ozone(O3) concentration, sand grain size and water content on the hydroxylation of n-alkanes and PAHs have been evaluated. The soil ozonation was found to be effective when applied with a concentration > 30 mg L-1 for initial diesel concentration of 25,000 mg kg-1. Higher ozonation(O3) efficiency was observed in the smaller grain size samples. Water content had little influence on the residual hydrocarbon fractions of the diesel, which indicates O3 will work relative well both in the dry and wet conditions. During soil ozonation, aldehydes and carboxylic acids were formed as by-products and reached a concentration 12.7 mg kg-1 of and 80 mg kg-1, respectively, within 20 h. After being exposed to O3 20 h, the soil pH decreased to 3. Therefore, formaldehyde concentration should be monitored during ozonation and background heavy metal concentration should be analyzed before the remediation process to avoid being inhaled by the remediation constructors and increasing the migration ability of the heavy metals.As the requirement of green remediation, we need to integrate environment, society and economic aspects into remediation project. There is growing interest and use of compost amendment to contaminated soil as it has been shown that compost can bring nutrients and microorganisms to degrade the petroleum hydrocarbons in soil. In Chapter 4, soil-based compost and spent mushroom compost substrate compost were added to soil contaminated with 5000 mg kg-1 crude oil to investigate the effect of composting conditions on the degradation of n-alkanes and PAHs. The composts greatly enhanced the biodegradation of n-alkanes and PAHs by more than 2 and 15 times compared to the unamended contaminated soil in 42 days. After 42 days, the residual concentration of n-alkanes and PAHs was less than 38 mg kg-1 and 0.3 mg kg-1. Principle Component Analysis(PCA) indicates that the water solubility and weekly tillage were negatively correlated with the residual hydrocarbons concentrations, while partition coefficient, molecular weight of the hydrocarbons were positively correlated with the residual hydrocarbons concentrations. This finding suggests that the degradation of alkanes and PAHs can be enhanced by increasing the aeration. The soil composting modelling results fit well with the experiment data in the initial 7 days, while the deviation increases as the composting time increases.Besides remediation treatment efficiency, it is also important to consider the energy consumption and gas emissions involved in the remediation activities. Therefore in Chapter 5, the energy consumption and air footprint of soil ozonation and soil composting were investigated using the Spreadsheets for Environmental Footprint Analysis(SEFA) tool. In soil ozonation, 93% of the diesel was consumed by the generator while in soil composting, 78% of the diesel was consumed by transport of the compost. The total energy consumption and off gas emission of soil ozonation were 42% and 26% less than those in soil composting. Laboratory analysis contributes to more than 60% for the GHG emissions in these two approaches. To reduce the GHG emissions, mobile analytical lab on site could be applied to provide real-time measurement for rapid decision making, and fate and transport modelling could be used to reduce sampling and analytical work.