Soil contamination with petroleum hydrocarbons has caused critical environmental and health defects and increasing attention has been paid for developing innovative technology for cleaning up this contamination. In this work, the washing process of a soil column by ionic surfactant sodium dodecyl sulfate (SIDS) was investigated. Water flow rate and the contamination duration (age) have been studied. The performance of water in the removal of diesel fuel was found to be non-negligible, while water contributed by 24.7% in the global elimination of n-alkanes. The effect of SDS is significant beyond a concentration of 8 mM. After 4 h of treatment with surfactant solution, the diesel soil content remains constant. which shows the existence of a necessary contact time needed to the surfactant to be efficient. The soil washing process at a rate of 3.2 mL/min has removed 97% of the diesel fuel. This surfactant soil remediation process was shown to be governed by the first-order kinetics. These results are of practical interest in developing effective surfactant remediation technology of diesel fuel contaminated soils. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.