Event
Munich, Germany
13 - 17 May
IFAT 2024
As released by Lamor Corporation Plc.
The second soil washing plant in Lamor’s soil cleaning projects in Kuwait has started operations. Hence, both biological remediation and soil washing are now successfully used on Lamor and Khalid Ali al-Kharafi & Brothers Company’s two individual soil treatment centres.
The joint venture of Lamor and Khalid Ali Al-Kharafi & Bros. Co., a local construction company, is responsible for two projects consisting of the planning and implementation of soil remediation in two separate areas. The work includes the development of the optimal solution, the construction of treatment facilities, and the treatment and restoration of oil-polluted soil. The projects began in 2021 and the biological remediation in early 2023.
Construction of the soil washing plants, designed and built by the Northern Ireland headquartered company CDE Group, started in the second quarter of 2023. The soil washing facility in the North was commissioned in December 2023, followed by the Southern facility, which has just started operations.
The plant design takes into account the sustainability aspects necessary to minimise environmental impacts as well as to reduce operating costs. For instance, the water used for the treatment origins from wastewater plants in Kuwait, and the plant itself is designed to recycle up to 70% of the water.
“CDE’s vision is to create our best world, a ton at a time. With both plants now operational, we are realising that vision in Kuwait. We have begun operator training and are gearing up to hand this project over to the joint venture of Lamor and Khalid Ali Al-Kharafi & Bros. Co.”, says Ruchin Garg, our Regional Manager Middle East & Africa. “CDE extends its gratitude to the entire team for their exemplary dedication to safety, as well as our valued partners and stakeholders for their ongoing support. The scale and ambition of this remediation programme cannot be understated. It is a true test of engineering.”
Kuwait soil cleaning is an enormous joint undertaking
In Kuwait, the UN funds the clean-up of a 114 square kilometre area with about 26 million cubic meters of oil-contaminated soil. The pollution is a consequence of the Gulf War, when hundreds of oil wells were torched in Kuwait, causing the world's largest anthropogenic oil spill. The UN has awarded USD 3 billion for soil remediation activities in the area.
The treatment technologies consist of both biological cleanup in windrows, i.e. bioremediation, for soils with lower petrochemical contamination, and mechanical soil washing for contaminated soil with a higher, i.e. over 5 percent hydrocarbon content.
During the first nine months of operation in 2023, Lamor’s bioremediation solutions cleaned and restored over 1.5 million tonnes of soil, which is about 33,000 truckloads. The soil washing facilities will annually treat an additional 728,000 tonnes of contaminated soil.
