Environmental Acceptability

The EMC SQUARED System products are non-hazardous, non-flammable and non-corrosive. No special safety precautions are required for storage and handling. The EMC SQUARED System products are in use by private industries and public agencies with strict environmental review policies. EMC SQUARED System products are in service for US federal government agencies with major land management responsibilities including the US Air Force, the US Army, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Forest Service and the National Park Service.

User Friendly Alternative

The EMC SQUARED System has many advantages in handling over conventional calcium based stabilizers (such as cement, fly ash and lime) not the least of which are a tremendous reduction in freight costs and the complete elimination of the on site problem of dealing with massive bulk quantities of dry or slurry products. These highly alkaline calcium based chemicals require protective clothing for safe handling including special face shields, head gear, gloves and boots. When calcium based powder products become airborne, they can become health hazards and are potentially damaging to structures, equipment, vehicles and aircraft within the vicinity of the project.

Liquid products based on sulfuric acid formulations and highly alkaline chemicals are sometimes added to soils. The liquid concentrates are hazardous to laboratory and construction personnel and require extreme caution in handling and dilution activities. Reactive and corrosive in nature, they can also damage laboratory testing equipment and construction machinery. The EMC SQUARED System provides a non-hazardous, non-corrosive, user-friendly alternative for stabilization of aggregate and soil materials without the need for special handling requirements.

Environmentally Friendly

As previously discussed, the EMC SQUARED System provides stabilization product technology that can be utilized by construction and testing personnel without special handling precautions and that can be specified for construction requirements in natural areas and other types of project applications with strict environmental review. This environmentally friendly aspect of the EMC SQUARED System products is important, but the ramifications of their use, improving the durability of earthwork and transportation structures and reducing the use of natural resources, is of far greater potential impact.

At the simplest of levels, substitution of a highly concentrated stabilization system for cement and lime based stabilizers can eliminate dozens and even hundreds of truck trips per single project while freeing up these products, which are so energy intensive in their production, for higher value applications where substitute products are not available. The lower applied costs and unique effectiveness of the EMC SQUARED System open up additional application areas for stabilization such as treatment of gravel roads. Stabilization helps to retain expensive gravel resources that have been mined, crushed, screened and hauled to site. This assists in cutting the high maintenance costs and erosion of surface materials associated with constant grading, and equally important, reduces the high equipment maintenance costs suffered by road users operating vehicles and trucks on unstabilized roads. These potential benefits apply to dirt as well as gravel roads, and in both cases, effective stabilization also translates into road surface erosion control and protection of water resources from road generated sedimentation.

Savings in natural resources occur when locally available soils or natural gravel resources can be upgraded in replacement of materials that must be mined, manufactured and imported to project location. In many cases, unpaved roads can be upgraded with stabilized aggregate surface courses to provide low maintenance running surfaces during interim or staged construction projects (functioning as stabilized or "bound" base layers for pavements to be placed at a later date) or as low cost measures that address rutting and washboarding problems adequately, thus eliminating otherwise seemingly inevitable requirements for reconstruction and paving.

Probably of greatest ultimate value is the economical improvement of roadbed materials to reduce or eliminate moisture infiltration and frost heave phenomenon. Problems unsolved in roadbed construction evolve into failures of overlying asphalt and concrete pavements, products that have been placed at a very high cost in natural resource use as well as financial outlay.