EFFECT OF DIESEL CONTAMINATION ON GEOTECHNICAL PROPERTIES OF CLAY NEAR BPCL

Oil contamination in soil may happen in many ways like oil spills during transportation on the land or oil drilling, leakage from storage tanks, oil tanker accidents etc. This contamination affects the environment very badly. This paper presents the effect of diesel on the plasticity characteristics, density and strength of the soil. The soil is taken from near BPCL, India and the soil was contaminated by adding varying percentage of diesel oil. Compaction, Atterberg limits and unconfined compression strength tests were conducted on the soil samples. The liquid limit, plastic limit and plasticity index of the soil increased as its diesel oil content increased. The optimum moisture content, maximum dry unit weight and unconfined compression strength of the soil decreases with increase in diesel oil content. Diesel oil contaminated soil requires stabilisation or remediation before using it as construction material.