Typical Soil Washing Process

Ex situ soil separation processes (often referred to as "soil washing"), mostly based on mineral processing techniques, are widely used in Northern Europe and America for the treatment of contaminated soil. Soil washing is a water-based process for scrubbing soils ex situ to remove contaminants. The process removes contaminants from soils in one of the followingtwo ways:

* By dissolving or suspending them in the wash solution (which can be sustained by chemical manipulation of pH for a period of time); or
* By concentrating them into a smaller volume of soil through particle size separation, gravity separation, and attrition scrubbing (similar to those techniques used in sand and gravel operations).

Soil washing systems incorporating most of the removal techniques offer the greatest promise for application to soils contaminated with a wide variety of heavy metal, radionuclides, and organic contaminants. Commercialization of the process, however, is not yet extensive.

The concept of reducing soil contamination through the use of particle size separation is based on the finding that most organic and inorganic contaminants tend to bind, either chemically or physically, to clay, silt, and organic soil particles. The silt and clay, in turn, are attached to sand and gravel particles by physical processes, primarily compaction and adhesion. Washing processes that separate the fine (small) clay and silt particles from the coarser sand and gravel soil particles effectively separate and concentrate the contaminants into a smaller volume of soil that can be further treated or disposed of. Gravity separation is effective for removing high or low specific gravity particles such as heavy metal-containing compounds (lead, radium oxide, etc.). Attrition scrubbing removes adherent contaminant films from coarser particles. However, attrition washing can increase the fines in soils processed. The clean, larger fraction can be returned to the site for continued use.

Complex mixture of contaminants in the soil (such as a mixture of metals, nonvolatile organics, and SVOCs) and heterogeneous contaminant compositions throughout the soil mixture make it difficult to formulate a single suitable washing solution that will consistently and reliably remove all of the different types of contaminants. for these cases, sequential washing, using different wash formulations and/or different soil to wash fluid ratios, may be required.

Soil washing is generally considered a media transfer technology. The contaminated water generated from soil washing are treated with the technology(s) suitable for the contaminants.

The duration of soil washing is typically short- to medium-term.
… read more