Soil stabilisation for reduced cost slurry storage

To investigate the potential of soil stabilisation techniques to increase the range of soils which could be suitable for construction of slurry storage lagoons.

To find a suitable treatment to make soil ‘impermeable’ and retain stability under wetting and drying conditions, which would enable more farmers to adopt this form of storage. 

Two different sub-soil types (sand and chalk) were mixed with different:

• Amounts of added cement powder
• Moisture contents
• Degrees of compaction 

Findings:

• To be deemed impermeable, a soil must have a permeability of 1x10-9ms-1 or less; none of the soils tested managed to meet the required criteria

• There was no correlation between the treatments and soil type with degree of impermeabilty attained

• A consequent review of the work has suggested that lime may have been a better add-mixture

• Further enquiries have confirmed that the technique is being used successfully for the construction of landfill sites and sealing contaminated soils, indicating that the technique does have potential