Soil Remediation
Service Companies

Soil Remediation Technologies

Contaminated soil represents a growing challenge. The more than 30,000 potentially contaminated sites in Canada represent a lost economic opportunity and threat to the health and wellbeing of Canadians and the environment. This contamination is the legacy of industrialization and insufficient environmental legislation and enforcement.

Globally hundreds of thousands of contaminated sites have been identified and require clean-up. The growing need for soil remediation is poised to become a large driver of technology, products and services for years to come.

The soil remediation sub-sector includes any company that provides technologies and/or services that assist in the assessment, clean-up, decommissioning or rehabilitation of soil contaminated by petroleum hydrocarbons, pesticides, inorganics, heavy metals and radioactive wastes. These can be found in a variety of sites such as oil and gas operations, mines, industrial complexes, waterways and harbours, leaking underground storage tanks, etc.

A Role for Technology

Technologies to remediate contaminated soil fall into two principal clean-up approaches: in-situ (which is always done on-site), or ex-situ (which can be done on- or off-site). In-situ treatment deals with contamination without removing material from the ground. Ex-situ treatment requires the removal of contaminated soil for treatment or landfilling.

Selecting and/or designing the right clean-up approach require skill and innovation. Most contaminated sites contain a complex cocktail of contaminants as well as unique site features (geology, hydrology, etc). As such, tailored approaches and technologies are required on a site-by-site basis, as determined through a site characterization and assessment. Other factors involved in technology selection for a particular site include the end goal for clean-up (i.e.: how clean the site is required to be), risk, stakeholder concerns, technological feasibility, available budget, etc.

Table 1 provides some sample remedial technologies and the contaminants and the applications that they are often associated with. Technologies in bold are conventionally used for each contaminant. However, the market is dominated by a few key proven clean-up options due to convenience, effectiveness/practicality, ease of integration into remediation systems, cost and acceptance, including:

This being said, there is a growing preference for in-situ approaches, and for niche technologies for specialized chemicals which cannot be treated by other remediation technologies.