Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	GR/M40011/01
Title:	NON-INVASIVE DETECTION OF OIL AND SOLVENT CONTAMINATION BY SPECTRAL INDUCED POLARISATION (SIP) TOMOGRAPHY
Principal Investigator:	Barker, Professor R
Other Investigators:	Ogilvy, Dr R
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:	BG Campus Geophysical Instruments Ltd Technos Ltd
Department:	Earth Sciences
Organisation:	University of Birmingham
Scheme:	Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts:	01 October 1999	Ends:	30 June 2003	Value (£):	92,491
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Assess/Remediate Contamination
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	Chemicals Environment
Related Grants:	GR/M67971/01
Panel History:
Summary on Grant Application Form
The investigation of the extent and nature of contamination on old industrial urban sites is usually carried out using conventional non-invasive geophysical techniques, supplemented by geochemical sampling, trial pits and boreholes. However, many common soil and groundwater contaminants occur as low concentration residuals in pore spaces and are thus difficult to detect by geophysical survey techniques. However, it has recently been shown that Spectral Induced Polarisation (SIP), the measurement of the phase and magnitude of resistivty over a broad frequency range, is able to detect low concentrations of contaminants and is also able to differentiate some types of contaminant. One of the problems is that the very few (US) commercial systems available are designed for large depths of investigation, are multifunctional and are consequently very expensive. No SIP system exists specifically designed for shallow contaminated land investigation or for application in the built environment, where plant or infrastructure may severely restrict surface access. This project aims to develop low cost instrumentation and novel cross-hole survey techniques-for SIP imaging surveys, together with cost-efficient data processing and interpretation techniques. The prototype system will be tested at a variety of contaminated sites to calibrate the results against known geochemical models and ground-truth.
Key Findings
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Further Information:
Organisation Website:	http://www.bham.ac.uk