OIL SPILLS AND THEIR EFFECT ON THE PROPERTIES OF SOIL

Abstract

The world is encountering oil pollution due to many reasons such as leakage of oil due to tanker accidents, transportation on land and sea, and during the process of oil drilling. This oil spill has a negative effect on the environment and on the ecological life and it may also change the geotechnical properties of the soil. The aim of this work was to study the effect of crude oil i.e. Kerosene and Diesel on
the properties of the soil. Three different types of soils were selected on the basis of their grain size distribution and their initial physical properties of the selected soils such as optimum moisture content, maximum dry density, and shear strength, grain size distribution, and permeability were determined. A number of samples were prepared by mixing the soil with different percentages of crude oil products (kerosene and diesel) and their effects were studied by conducting different experiments such as permeability test, proctor compaction test, direct shear test .When normal stress were low the percentage of diesel and kerosene in soil was increased, the shear strength increased then it decreased .When normal stress was high as the percentage of diesel and kerosene in soil increased, this resulted in the decrease in shearing strength where as permeability decreased in all the samples with the addition of addition of diesel and kerosene