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Abstract
Cement±bentonite walls are commonly used for remediation by containment or pollution prevention, in addition to their use
as a barrier to water ¯ow in more conventional construction. The results from an investigation of an in situ single-phase
cement±bentonite slurry wall are detailed, with particular attention paid to the role of advective and diffusive ¯uxes in
contaminant transport.
The wall under investigation was installed, using standard methods and with a normal mix design, in August 1995 in order to
contain leachates arising from `piggy-backing' of an existing `dilute and disperse' land®ll site. In September 1998, the wall was
investigated during which the top of the wall was exposed at adjacent locations allowing the drilling of three boreholes using
rotary coring techniques. Core recovery and quality were high and samples obtained during coring were retained for testing in
the laboratory.
The material recovered was quite strong and not treatable by conventional soil testing and preparation techniques. In
addition, the material was susceptible to drying upon exposure to the atmosphere, with an accompanying loss of structure.
In spite of this, meaningful laboratory tests were undertaken. Hydraulic conductivity of the samples was measured using
constant ¯ow-rate methods and the relative importance of the diffusive ¯ux was investigated using a variety of simple
techniques. The advective ¯ux was found to be the dominant contaminant transport process. The results of the laboratory
test programme are presented and placed in the context of the long-term performance of cement±bentonite slurry walls. q 2001
Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Land®lls; Disposal barriers; Permeability; Advection; Diffusion; Breakthrough curves
Cement±bentonite slurry walls are in common use ² cementitious materials (usually cement and ground
as vertical cut-off barriers to allow the containment of granulated blast furnace slagg (GGBS));
liquids and gases in the ground. Trenches are exca- ² bentonite clay (usually sodium exchanged calcium
vated under cement±bentonite slurry which initially montmorillinite);
supports the trench during construction and later self ² water.
hardens in situ Ð hence the term single-phase. The
It is important that the long-term behaviour of
* Fax: 44-113-2335-259. these walls is understood before heavy reliance is
E-mail address: l.philip@earth.leeds.ac.uk (L.K. Philip). placed upon their long-term integrity as pollution
0013-7952/01/$ - see front matter q 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0013-795 2(00)00102-2
210 L.K. Philip / Engineering Geology 60 (2001) 209±221
Table 1
Wall constituents, details and age at the site
Site Date of wall installation Natural geology Depth of wall (mbgl) Mix proportions (kg)
Yorkshire August 1995 Glacial clays, sands and gravels 1±6 40 40 150 920
Table 2
Summary of ®eld work and associated ®ndings
Yorks Three exposures of top of wall Hand equipment Management Wall seen to be in good
problems due to condition with no
environmental issues oxidation visible
Three boreholes Track mounted Access dif®culties Excellent core recovery a
wireline rotary
rig
a
The wall material became more stony near the base of the hole due to intermixing with the host material.
Fieldwork was undertaken in September 1998 The results are summarised in Table 3. A relationship
when the wall was about 3 years old and a summary between depth and moisture content was not found.
of the work is displayed in Table 2 and Fig. 2. Upon drying the samples collapsed with an associated
Fresh slurry wall material is a rich blue colour due loss of structure, as seen in Fig. 3; however, it was
to the impurities originating from the GGBS. Upon possible to preserve some structure by con®ning the
exposure to air the sulphides in the material oxidise specimens during drying. X-ray diffraction con®rmed
and the material turns beige±white, allowing easy the material to comprise cement minerals, with no
visual assessment of defects, cracks, and zones clays occupying $5% by volume being detected.
which may have desaturated. Any such `oxidation' Scanning electron microscopy indicated that the
zone could be interpreted as a desaturation zone and specimen structure may have large open pore spaces
a breakdown in the long-term integrity may be with a skeleton of cement minerals. At the micro-
implied. In the absence of oxygen, the damaged scopic scale a heterogeneous mix of cement minerals
zones may not be visible. is found whereas on a macroscopic scale the slurry
The wall investigated was found to be in excellent wall material looks homogenous.
condition, with no cracks or defects visible and only a
very thin oxidation layer (,1 mm) encapsulating the
4. Hydraulic conductivity testing
wall.
4.1. Methods
Table 3
Summary table of the results of index testing
and Znidarcic (1989). One such advantage is that it is Tests were routinely undertaken with cell pressures of
easier to control the small ¯ow rates rather than 600 kPa and back pressures of 500 kPa, and were
measure them (as required in a constant head test) computer logged for ease of determination of achieve-
and although the head does vary over the test, it ment of steady-state conditions. Hydraulic gradient
increases in a controlled way until steady state is averaged about 27 and varied between 3 and 70. Typi-
achieved at a constant head. The experimental set- cal ¯ow rates were between 0.001 and 0.01 ml/min,
up, seen in Fig. 4, has been well used at the University with the tests taking anything from 20 min to 2 days.
of Leeds and found to be ideal, with a main advantage
being the ¯exibility in test regimes and the ease of 4.2. Results
diagnosis of errors, equipment failure and leaks. In
addition, the tests are relatively short-term, thereby The results from the permeability testing can be
minimising the effects due to biological growths and seen in Figs. 5±8 and are summarised in Table 4.
the effects of temperature variation. The permeability varied and, except for the top of
Test samples comprised 50 mm diameter samples BH2, gave results of the order 10 28 to 10 210 m/s.
taken from the rotary cores obtained in the ®eld. The top of the wall had a slightly larger permeability,
Samples were obtained by laboratory rotary coring thought to be associated with leachate degradation of
techniques and were fully saturated prior to testing. the wall (evidenced from chemical testing), but no
other conclusive trend in permeability with depth date the test regime as, within the range adopted by
was observed at lower depths. No leachate degrada- the testing programme, hydraulic conductivity was
tion of the top of the wall was visible on site although generally independent and insensitive to changes or
some loss of strength was apparent (but not increase in the value of the hydraulic gradient.
quanti®ed) when handling these specimens in the Although all the tests were undertaken at initial
laboratory. effective con®ning pressures of 100 kPa, and most
In addition, to ascertain the effect of hydraulic within similar hydraulic gradients, the effect of
gradient upon hydraulic conductivity a number of increasing effective stress was investigated and the
samples were tested at a variety of gradients with results can be seen in Fig. 8. At large effective stresses
the results shown in Figs. 6 and 7. These results vali- inelastic deformation takes place and the specimen
was quite sensitive to changes in effective stress; tered for geological materials (Neuzil, 1994). The
however, at lower values of effective stress elastic maximum effective con®ning pressure that a wall
deformation takes place and changes in hydraulic will be under in situ is about 200 kPa. Further work
conductivity are not signi®cant. While there is a on the changes in k in relation to the timing of the
large overall change in the permeability due to application of con®ning stress during curing is
con®ning stress, it is not outside the range encoun- reported in Manassero et al. (1995).
chloride) was chosen as the diffusing ion. Initial reser- generally, ,0.008 although one test yielded a higher
voir concentrations were around 16,100 mg/l Cl 2 and result of 0.013. Some interfacial partitioning, referred
10,500 mg/l Na 1 for the diffusion cell and 10,700 mg/ to by Rowe et al. (1995) and described in greater
l Cl 2 and 6800 mg/l Na 1 for the diffusion tank. The detail by Kemper and van Schaik (1966), was found
diffusion experiments were conducted at a constant and so both modelling and mass balance techniques,
temperature of 228C ^ 1. where applicable, were used in deriving tortuosity.
The exclusion of leakage pathways was the main During interfacial partitioning, a sharp drop in
problem encountered in devising the experimental set- concentration gradient across both reservoir±soil
up and this was due to the nature of the material, interfaces, especially the high-concentration side,
which was strong enough to core like a rock but not was observed. This effectively produces a very low
strong enough to achieve completely perfect cores of diffusion coef®cient and a large concentration gradi-
consistent size. Also, unlike clay soils, the material ent in a very thin interfacial layer. In the modelling, in
was too strong to be moulded into place. Low-pres- order to achieve good-®t curves to the theoretical and
sure seals, o-rings and membranes or non-reactive actual data, the initial concentrations have been varied
putty were used to prevent leakage around the sides in order to model the effects of interfacial partitioning.
of the sample. Theoretical and actual data curves had a good ®t and
At the termination of each experiment, after around there was reasonable agreement in the tortuosity
1 month, the samples were divided into sub-samples factors obtained from the Cl 2 ion and the Na 1 ion,
along the length, and pore ¯uids extracted. The reser- as can be seen in Figs. 11 and 12. This indicates that
voir and pore ¯uids were analysed for chloride and the Na 1 ions are not being retarded when compared
sodium ion using ion chromatography (IC). with the Cl 2 ions, which is probably due to the
composition nature of the original mix which was
5.2.2. Results rich in Na±bentonite, and therefore most of the sites
Analysis of the results indicates the tortuosity to be, for Na 1 ions were presumably already occupied.
The values of tortuosity obtained are very low,
compared with the clayey barriers; however, any
error in the tests such as leakage paths, higher than
anticipated background ion counts, etc. would tend to
increase the values of tortuosity obtained. Such a low
tortuosity would imply extremely slow diffusion
times. Although a conservative ion was used in
these experiments, it is possible that the slurry wall
material has considerable retardation potential,
through ion exchange with calcium silica hydrate
Fig. 10. Double reservoir tank. (CSH) or cement, minerals and ettringite (Gougar
L.K. Philip / Engineering Geology 60 (2001) 209±221 217
et al., 1996), and that the results were affected by one or two horizons with no pattern emerging. A
retardation Ð so producing `falsely' low values for possible trend of decreasing lithium concentration
tortuosity. with depth was identi®ed but it is thought to be not
conclusive. Both Ca and Sr show a possible but incon-
5.3. Field pro®les clusive depletion at shallow depths. Most of the varia-
tions picked up are thought to be due to micro-scale
Pore ¯uids were analysed using IC and inductively variations in wall chemistry, particularly due to the
coupled plasma (ICP) techniques to see if a contami- metals present in the GGBS.
nant plume due to leachate presence could be Using IC, an advection/diffusion front was success-
identi®ed. fully identi®ed for chloride ion (see Fig. 13) with
ICP results were fairly inconclusive. Several ions signi®cant Cl 2 concentrations at shallow depth drop-
(Ba, Al, K, As, Na) showed some variation with no ping off to virtually zero deeper in the wall found.
depth pattern emerging. Several ions (Zn, Pb, Cd, Cr) Due to the inherent unknowns, the assessment of
were undetected while some (Mn, Ni, Fe, Mg, Cu) transport parameters from the ®eld pro®les is dif®cult
showed very low detectable concentrations at just and therefore not attempted here.
218 L.K. Philip / Engineering Geology 60 (2001) 209±221
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