Heavy Metal Stabilization Testing

Ursus has the expertise to evaluate a variety of treatment chemistries to stabilize heavy metals in soil, groundwater, and wastes. Contrary to chemical vendors that test only their treatment product, Ursus does not have a proprietary treatment chemistry, therefore, we test a variety of chemistries, both proprietary and non-proprietary, to determine the most effective economical treatment approach.

The benefit to you – you receive unbiased data on multiple treatment chemistries to assist with your remediation design.

Ursus utilizes procedures that reflect the disposal setting of the treated waste. For example, the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP) is used to determine if wastes are characteristically hazardous. If treated waste were to be disposed of in a Subtitle C landfill, the TCLP would be the only procedure to follow. On the other hand, if the goal were to leave the waste on-site, the treated waste would need to meet TCLP criterion and testing by the Synthetic Precipitation Leaching Procedure (SPLP) would be recommended to better simulate the disposal setting.

The TCLP is designed to simulate conditions wastes would be exposed to in an active municipal landfill. Regulatory bodies most often used the TLCP as a gauge of the waste's toxicity to the environment. However, when wastes are placed on-site, either in monofills or as fill material, no municipal waste is involved, making the use of the TCLP unsuitable. An organic acid is used to leach the material to evaluate contaminant mobility in the TCLP. The SPLP was developed to simulate leaching under acid rain conditions, similar to conditions that can be expected when used as fill. The procedure is similar to the TCLP; however, the amount of acidity used in the test is significantly less. Due to the different types and amount of acid used in each test, the leaching results can be drastically different. Ursus has the expertise to not only treat the waste to meet TCLP criterion, we can also treat the waste under SPLP conditions showing that the treatment approach is viable in both an acidic leaching environment (TCLP) and a neutral leaching environment (SPLP).

The benefit to you – you gain the knowledge that the treated material will not leach under normal disposal conditions, thus reducing liability for improper treatment for the disposal setting.

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