Surgical Excavation^®

SAFETY, EFFICIENCY, EXCAVATION WASTE MINIMIZATION

Environmental remediation processes are sometimes necessary in locations and in working environments that are particularly sensitive to physical disruption, and are often complicated by the presence of infrastructure and underground utilities that can make conventional mechanical excavation dangerous, or even impossible. Typical “sensitive” locations include city streets and intersections, or inside the operating perimeters of factories, petroleum refineries, bulk fuel storage terminals or chemical plants. Physical mobility restrictions as well as the presence of high-risk, impact-sensitive underground utilities sometimes preclude the use of backhoes, excavators, and even hand-tools, all of which are capable of damaging fluid-charged or electrified underground pipes, wires or cables.

Surgical Excavation^® by Orion-SurgEx Environmental Technologies, Inc. provides an extremely safe, efficient, and effective solution for such situations by virtue of a modified pneumatic-vacuum excavation process that can quickly and safely move earthen materials to depths up to 20-feet without the risk of damaging buried pipes, wires, cables or other underground structures. It can be used in places that are not accessible to backhoes or loaders or other mechanized earth-moving equipment, such as inside of buildings, basements, behind containment structures, or in between abutting structures. It is capable of digging direct holes, trenches, or simply moving earthen materials from one place to another via flexible hoses. Unlike a “Supervac”, Surgical Excavation^® can take place up 300-linear feet away from the truck-mounted generating platform that provides its essential energy sources of ultra-high pressure air, and industrial capacity solids vacuum recovery. It isn’t necessary to position the equipment near or at the dig-site. An important secondary benefit from this technology is the ability to “drop-ship,” or deposit excavated materials into various receptacles anywhere in between the dig-site and the truck-mounted equipment platform. Excavated materials can be vacuum-shuttled from the excavation zone directly into various receptacles such as drums, containers, or directly into a 3 yd3 recovery vessel that can dump accumulated soils in a stockpile for bulk staging, or later hauled off site to a selected disposal location. A Surgical Excavation^® team excavation team can move upwards of 300 yd³ of material in a given work-day from remote locations or confined areas that mechanical excavators simply cannot access, or perform. As well, surgically excavated soil is highly selective, and dramatically reduces the incidental expansion volume of impacted soils. Segregation of contaminated versus clean material is highly accurate when guided with a hand-held screening device. There is virtually no chance of “over digging” a properly delineated and accurately demarcated excavation zone, and, if necessary, the excavated material will be immediately containerized into sealed shipping containers in one seamless operation, without the need for additional handling.

REMOTE ACCESS EXCAVATION

The northeast and mid-western United States depend primarily on the use of fuel oil for heat. The storage tanks and associated piping in both residential and commercial buildings are often located in basements, or are buried adjacent to the structures they serve, and sometimes fail. Leaked or spilled fuel oils can migrate from the leak source into the soil material under concrete slabs, around footings, and into various remote and inaccessible physical locations. A large loss of fuel can make the building unsafe for occupation, until the bulk of the adsorbed fluid mass is removed from the enclosed environment. An Orion-SurgEx team can quickly begin locating and extracting the fuel-saturated material from beneath concrete floors, around footings and drains from virtually anywhere inside the building,. Contaminated soil is safely deposited in individual 55 gallon DOT approved drums for staging and eventual disposal.

In the same operation, the technicians can install a vapor recovery system to capture and eject any residual fumes or odors lingering after the mass-recovery operation, without the need for additional excavating equipment or personnel, in most situations.

The remote access concept can be used in many situations where contamination is present, and represents potential risk, but is in a difficult or physically constrained location. Orion-SurgEx can pre-delineate the distribution of contamination, prepare a geometric and volumetric model for guidance, then safely and efficiently remove the material for disposal or staging.