CAIER's innovative development: factory waste contaminated soil treatment and disposal

The Central Asian Institute for Environmental Research (CAIER) was established in 2012 to draw attention to the environmental problems of Kazakhstan, explore them, and develop innovative solutions for environmental protection.

A part of ​​the institute's work is industrial waste-contaminated soil treatment and disposal. The oil lakes cover hundreds of thousands of hectares of our country's land. Tons of oil sludge are stored in the tanks. The combustion of such sludge releases loads of toxic and carcinogenic substances, resulting in air pollution, and poisoning of water resources, vegetation, and soil and posing a danger to the ecosystem and human health.

Oil sludge belongs to hazard class 3 highly toxic products. The oil sludge presently forms landfills, and oil lakes are filled with soil. Many companies see the waste disposal problem in a heterogeneous multicomponent composition of impurities, which can also be radioactive, among other things. All this hurts the environment. Our institute has developed an efficient approach to processing oil sludge. This process transforms sludge into durable, environmentally friendly raw materials for further soil block production.

This method is unique for its cyclic process, generating the soil blocks and turning hazardous industrial waste into safe, ready-to-use products. Soil blocks have unique properties. They have a durable structure and are resistant to external factors such as humidity and temperature changes, meaning, as the case may be, they can be of great use in infrastructure construction. Soil blocks are a patented product and have undergone mandatory sanitary and epidemiological tests confirming their safety and suitability for operation.

The soil treatment solution the CAIER developed is universal and can be used not only for oil sludge processing but also for drilling metallurgical sludge and silt deposits.