Vicat enters EUR1.3m ARM venture with Serpol

Vicat and Serpol have entered a EUR1.3m joint venture, Terenvie, to treat oil-polluted soil and turn it to cleaned, mineral-rich land. This source of silica or clay can then be used as “a partial replacement (five per cent) of quarry materials, to save natural resources without impacting the quality of the cement, perfectly standardised,” said Stéphane Rutkowski, manager at Vicat.

Earthworks produce around 5Mta of oil-polluted soil at the sites of former service stations, oil depots or accident and leakage sites. Serpol’s phytoremediation technology will be implemented as the Terenvie aims to treat 60,000tpa of land from local sources from its base on a 3.2ha plot near the Feyzin refinery. "The excavated soil will be transported to the platform, where it will be layered 1 meter thick and sown," says Vincent Desroches, Terenvie’s director. The final byproduct of this treatment will then be delivered to Vicat’s Montalieu cement plant in Isère, where it will serve as alternative raw material for a new brand of cement, Vicat Eco-Valorisation.