Soil Stabilizers, Stabilisation, Stabilization, Stabiliser and Road Remediation Construction Technologies Increases CBR Strength For Half The Cost Of Traditional Stone Aggregate
Road Soil Stabilization and Road Remediation are not new technologies, but they are relatively new to North America. With road maintenance costs rising and out of control for most states, towns and municipalities in these difficult economic times, combined with the severe impact of this past years winter, Environmental Construction Technologies has the right solution at the right time. With our new breakthrough in environmentally friendly soil stabilization construction technologies, we can save your highway departments budget 50% or more over asphalt and cement road resurfacing, guaranteed. With our line of RP Soil Stabilization Systems, we can convert any type of road soil composition into a high quality completely waterproof surface that will significantly reduce your construction and maintenance costs.
With millions of miles of unpaved roads in the US alone, we can save you millions of dollars in road costs and repairs. In the North East, with the worst winter in years, potholes remain the largest problem and expensive to repair. With Environmental Construction Technologies, your pothole problems are eliminated. No matter what your road construction problems are, we have the most cost effective solutions available worldwide. Our RP RoadBond process is environmentally safe with full MSDS reports available on request.
If you would like an evaluation and a test of your regional road soil, please feel free to take advantage of our soil analysis where we will actually return your soil sample in the form of a stabilized earth brick along with full soil analysis for absolute proof of what we can do with your roads. Please feel free to contact the distributor who referred you to this site for more details. With thousands of miles of roads completed over more than a dozen years worldwide, and with the US government as our most recent client, combined with our own RP in house research laboratories, no one else in the soil stabilization industry can equal our proven varifiable third party evaluated track record. With Esso/Exxon oil, Weyerhaeuser and City of Calgary long term reports available, you will be confident you have chosen the best soil stabilzation products in the industry. We also specialize in pond, lake or irrigation canals, so please consider our system for cost effective water conservation control technologies as well.
PRODUCT INTRODUCTION:
A Brief Summary of the Properties of Clay and it’s role in Road Construction.
To obtain even a most basic understanding of the action of RP Plus as an effective soil stabilizer, it is first necessary to have some basic knowledge of the nature of clay particles and the interaction of both water and clay together. This brief explanation touches simplistically on the nature and properties of clay, the attraction of water to it, it’s role in road construction, problems of road failure and the stabilising action of RP Plus soil stabilisers.
Small particles of sand and silt are particles of original rock or small mineral crystals. Of the fine particles in the soil and in a typical road gravel, only clays, unlike sand and silt, have undergone mineralogical changes.
The mineral structure of clays is typified by octahedra or tetrahedra joined together in a lattice structure. The lattice molecular structure of clays is such, that they exhibit a net electrical charge on the surface of the particles. The charge may be predominantly anionic (-) on the flat surface and cationic (+) on the edges.
Clay particles are called layer silicates as the lattice structures form layers so that many clay particles resemble minute fish scales. As a result some clays have an enormous surface area per gram. The large surface area of the clays combined with the electrostatic attraction between water and clay can result in enormous forces in the process of swelling and shrinkage of clays (up to 10,000 atmospheres of pressure), such that the swelling of clay, can lift buildings off their foundations.
The water molecule is Di-polar, for example; it has the oxygen at one end and the hydrogen at the other end of the molecule. There is a net (-) charge at one end of the molecule and a net (+) charge at the other end. It is this characteristic of the water molecule which weakly attracts one molecule to an other and gives water it’s ultimate surface tension. Water, which is a natural conductor, is electrostatically attracted to the surface of the clay particles. In fact clay particles are surrounded by a layer of water electrostatically bound to the clay. This layer is called a ” diffuse double layer ” because the molecules of water and cations close to the clay particle surface are tightly bound while the molecules of water in the outer part of the electrostatically bound water are more weakly held.
It is this affinity (attraction) between water and clay which gives clay its properties of cohesion and plasticity, properties which sand and silt do not possess alone. Clay is therefore essential in all gravel as its plasticity (plastic nature when wet) enables the road to be shaped and compacted, and its cohesion binds all of the rocks, sand and silt together.
The majority of road failures are associated with the action of water (sometimes the lack of water), or perhaps more precisely, the interaction between water and the clay particles in the road. Wetting and drying cycles can cause the road to break up through associated swelling and shrinkage of the clay in the road. A high moisture content can make gravels with high clay content very soft and plastic so they become very boggy in wet and rainy weather.
On the other hand, road gravels with insufficient clay or poorly compacted clay, which thus lack cohesion, can become loose dusty and corrugated in dry weather (similar to dry sand on the beach compared to wet sand).
RP Plus is an advanced chemical soil stabiliser which has an extremely powerful ionizing action in water which induces cation (+ ions e.g. Ca++, Na+, K+, Mg++, H+) exchange at the surface of the clay particles in the gravel. By the process of ionic exchange water that would normally be electrostatically bound to the clay particles is now replaced by ions allowing much of this water to be expelled as free water.
Other processes occur through the use of RP Plus soil stabiliser, including coagulation and flocculation of clay particles after compaction and some cementing action through formation of insoluble salts.
The result of treating a soil with RP Plus is that, on compaction, the clay particles can be moved much closer together thus reducing normal voids in all soils. Achieving a significant increase in soil density is the secret to soil stabilzation. With better particle interlock and increased agglomeration of the clay we achieve superior results to any other road construction building system. The bearing capacity (ability to hold up under heavy loads or high traffic volume) of the road is increased significantly, and road wear is greatly reduced.
The process of ionic exchange chemically induced by RP Plus at the surface of clay particles is a permanent long term solution. The net charge on an ion is greater than the electrostatic attraction of a water molecule so that after ionic exchange occurs, the net forces of attraction at the surface of the clay particles are largely neutralized.
Treatment with RP Plus permanently reduces the attraction between water and clay and eliminates the swell and shrinkage of the inherent clay. Use of RP Plus has been shown to increase the bearing capacity of a compacted gravel by as much as 250% according to the California Bearing Ratio (C.B.R.), which is a standard measure of bearing capacity used worldwide.