University team has right brew for success

An environmental team based at the University of Teesside team has received funding to investigate a pioneering way of cleaning up some of the country’s most polluted waste.

The Middlesbrough-based university’s Clean Environment Management Centre (Clemance) has got the grant from the Government’s Business Resource Efficiency and Waste (BREW) programme to experiment with a practice known as ‘soil washing’.

BREW - which recycles revenue generated through the Landfill Tax - is dedicated to supporting work that diverts waste away from landfill sites.

Soil washing uses water and chemical additives to remove contaminants. Using this method enables the clean soil to be safely re-used rather than sent to landfill sites.

Material on which the process can be used include soil from former industrial brownfield sites, oily waste from places such as petrol stations, sludge from refineries and materials from oil spillages, explained Dr Richard Lord, head of Clemance’s Bioremediation Programme.

The process works by using bacterial extracts as a natural form of surfacant - the same kind of substances which make soap a cleaning agent - to break down and separate the contaminants, allowing them to be dissolved or reduced to more manageable and more environmentally-friendly proportions.

Soil washing is becoming increasingly important to industries which are facing ever more stringent European Union and British Government directives calling on companies to drastically reduce the amount of waste they send to landfill.

Having carried out initial research, the Clemance team will spend the early part of next year collecting polluted samples from sites around the region. They will then be tested in the laboratory until September 2007 when the team will provide its final report.

Dr Lord said: “Our research will assess the soil washing methods which work most effectively. It will be experimental work, much of which will take place in our laboratories.

“The work fits in with the general principles behind Clemance, which is to find ways of helping industry reduce the amount of damaging waste that it produces, either through recycling or cleaning it up with methods like soil washing.

“During the research we will add bacteria to the contaminated materials and see which ones work best in breaking the pollutants down. A key part of our research will be add to the knowledge of the processes, in order to assess which bacteria works most effectively in degrading contaminants. It is work which has great potential.”

The Clemance soil washing research project is funded by DEFRA’s Waste & Resources R&D Programme, which in turn is funded from the Business Resource Efficiency and Waste (BREW) programme.

For further information, contact Dr Richard Lord on 01642 384418 or email r.lord@tees.ac.uk

---