IMPROVING THE STABILITY OF BENTONITE SLURRY USING GELLAN GUM FOR AN EMERGENT HYDRAULIC BARRIER

The distinctive properties of bentonite such as hydration, swelling, water absorption, ion adsorption, high viscosity, and thixotropy make it a valuable material for many applications in geotechnical engineering such as hydraulic barriers, drilling slurry, and landfill liners. Many additives such as cement, hay fiber, and polymer have been used to enhance the engineering performance of bentonite slurry, which are proved in respected research. This study introduces gellan gum as a friendly environmental additive that improves bentonite slurry stability when bentonite is used for hydraulic barriers/walls. The bentonite was treated with different gellan gum concentration as 0% (untreated); 2%; 3%; 4%, 5%, 6% and 7% to the mass of distilled water. A series of unconfined compression tests were conducted on gellan gum – bentonite mixture. The test results show the effect of gellan gum on the unconfined compressive strength of bentonite slurry in initial and thermal curing conditions.