Washing technology for the decontamination of soil and sediment

This paper relates the commercialisation of Bergmann soil/sediment washing technology, describes the unit operations employed, and discusses the economic and technical justification for selecting a washing process for site remediation purposes. The technical basis of the washing process is the application of a suite of wet mineral processing techniques to bring about the segregation of contaminant-rich phases from the bulk of the soil or sediment mass. Because of the resultant reduction in volume of the contaminant-bearing streams, substantial savings in the costs of subsequent waste disposal or destruction processes can accrue. Process performance data from two recent North American case studies are presented.