Radio frequency system for thermal soil remediation

Radiofrequency (RF) heating of contaminated sediments is an effective and flexible method for soils remediation. Proper design of the antennas responsible of radiating into the sediments has a pivotal importance in the performances of those processes, but difficulties arise due to the fact that the radiators are buried in a lossy, time - variant and temperature - dependent medium. In this paper, a novel system for RF soil heating is presented, with a particular emphasis on the design of antennas. Both simulations and measurements of the system are presented to show the effectiveness and the viability of such systems.