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What is environmental soil mixing?

We've found that soil mixing is a great way of remediating contaminated soil and groundwater using chemicals and other compounds. Soil mixing is more regularly used…

What is environmental soil mixing?

We’ve found that soil mixing is a great way of remediating contaminated soil and groundwater using chemicals and other compounds.

Soil mixing is more regularly used for geotechnical ground stabilisation, where the technique is used to improve the structure of soil for construction.  Environmental soil mixing is focused on the remediation of contaminated soil and water, and it is often tied in with improving soil structure as well.  The reason for identifying the difference is that the design and implementation of environmental soil mixing can vary significantly from geotechnical applications and as such you should make sure you’re talking to the right people.

The main challenge for environmental remediation using chemicals for processes including chemical oxidation, stabilisation, and solidification, is getting the treatment to the contaminant.  We’ve had great success by injecting chemicals, however as an alternative technique soil mixing significantly increases the variety of ground conditions for chemical treatment, and the duration of a program of injections is generally a lot longer than it would be for soil mixing.

Soil mixing provides the joint benefits of dispersing treatment materials thoroughly throughout the contaminated materials, while also physically breaking down both the soil structure and certain contaminant structures.

Soil mixing is also used for the installation of permeable reactive barriers.

Of course it’s not the right technology for every contaminant or every site.  If you’re interested in finding out more please do not hesitate to get in contact by e-mail or phone (0800 0209 307)

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    • Hi Kenneth, thanks for the question. We find that petrol (hydrocarbon) contaminated soils respond well to soil mixing with added chemical oxidants (chemox). Chemox provides a lot of the power behind the remediation, soil mixing adds in physical attrition of the contamination, and also aerates the soils to enhance bioremediation, while distributing the chemox throughout the soil matrix which is one of the biggest challenges in remediation.

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