Environmental and engineering solutions firm OTEK Australia, has become the first Australian company to successfully combine two contaminated land assessment technologies, with interesting results now possible for those in the environmental sector.
The combination of Direct Sensing Tools and an EnCORE sampler have increased the reliability of analytical results and enabled contamination data to be processed in real time, making the process faster than previous approaches.
The major benefit for organisations who own, or are looking to purchase potentially contaminated land is the ability to reliably gauge the return on investment for a project – these tools provide a greater level of certainty around the clean up activity that is required.
These new tools provide companies with extremely reliable information that enables them to have a more holistic view when making financial projections for land purchase, land sale, litigation or remediation activities.
This is particularly important when developing industrial or contaminated land, especially for residential developments and resource sector projects.
The costs of using these new technologies is lower than traditional methods and provides greater long term benefits by avoiding surprises and unplanned work.
OTEK Chief Technical Officer Glenn Thiele said, “Being the first company in Australia to offer the full range of tools and rapid interpretations OTEK is already providing clients with greatly improved decision making capabilities when it comes to tricky environmental planning decision making.
“The difference between this advanced technology and traditional approaches is like looking at an extremely hi-res photo and a low-res pixelated image. The comparison is like night and day.”
The Direct Sensing Tools used by OTEK include a soil conductivity/membrane interface probe, a ultra-Violet Optical Screening Tool and a Hydraulic Profiling Tool. With the help of the professional team at South Western Drilling, the tools are pushed into the ground where they collect detailed information on chemicals that have leaked into the land.
The data collected is then analysed by an extremely sophisticated computer set up and the interpreted by OTEK consultants to deliver the most rapid, accurate picture of contamination available.
The typical techniques currently used in Australia, provide only 25 – 100 data points to analyse per day whereas this new technology results in 9,000 – 18,000 data points, greatly increasing the reliability of results.