Effects of mineral admixtures on some properties of crude oil polluted sand

This thesis presents a study on environmental pollution by crude oil in a contaminated area. Mineral admixtures such as ground granulated blast furnace slag and fly ash are used to stabilize polluted soil. The overarching goal of this study is to evaluate the addition mineral admixtures to improve the polluted soil by crude oil. This study focused on the Erbil-Gwear main road location close to the Lajan village. Since there are several refinery stations in this area it is paramount to study the environmental issues. Samples of sandy soil were artificially mixed with various percentage of crude oil namely 0%, 2%, 4%, 6%, 8%, 10%, 12%, 14% and 16% in relative to their dry weight to observe the influences of crude oil contamination on some properties of sand samples. To investigate the effect of mineral admixture on the contaminated soil samples by crude oil several mixtures were prepared. For instance, mixtures were mixed by the addition of 0%, 4%, 6% and 8% crude oil with GGBFS and FA admixtures with the amount of 0%, 10% and 15% were utilized in this study. The compaction and direct shear tests were utilized in this study. The results of this research show that specific gravity, the optimum moisture content and the maximum dry density were decreased while the percentage of crude oil content was increased. The results of friction angle were fluctuated with increasing crude oil. Apparent cohesion (c) values were increased up to a certain point and then slightly decreased with increasing the percentage of crude oil addition. Mineral admixtures provide an improvement in compaction and the strength properties of polluted soil. Moreover, the statistical analysis was used to demonstrate the significant differences of each factor used in this research.