Expansive Soil Remediation with Calcium Carbide - what is the mix rate?
Expansive Soil Remediation with Calcium Carbide - what is the mix rate?
(OP)
A client has asked me to come up with a mix design to bring his site's red clay's PI down from 22 to between 5 and 18. He said that in addition to bringing me a sample of the red clay, he was also going to bring me some "lime" so I can run whatever tests I wanted to run. I thought he meant quicklime or hydrated lime. Instead, he brought me a big container of Calcium Carbide (see attached photo). I'm not sure at what ratio to mix it in as. I found this paper online and 20% seems to be right. I wasn't planning on adding flyash, unless I have to. He plans on using this soil beneath an asphalt parking lot.
Link to paper I found online: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S...
Questions:
1) is this an appropriate use of Calcium Carbide
2) at what percentage should I mix in the Calcium Carbide to lower his PI in the most efficient way?
3) how should I safely crush up this calcium carbide so I can mix it in and run tests on the treated soil? (I have a full soils and materials testing laboratory at my disposal....)
4) if (2) is unknown, what tests can i run (as quickly as possible) to determine optimum mix ratio?
Thanks. Please provide online references, if possible.
R
Link to paper I found online: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S...
Questions:
1) is this an appropriate use of Calcium Carbide
2) at what percentage should I mix in the Calcium Carbide to lower his PI in the most efficient way?
3) how should I safely crush up this calcium carbide so I can mix it in and run tests on the treated soil? (I have a full soils and materials testing laboratory at my disposal....)
4) if (2) is unknown, what tests can i run (as quickly as possible) to determine optimum mix ratio?
Thanks. Please provide online references, if possible.
R






RE: Expansive Soil Remediation with Calcium Carbide - what is the mix rate?
Mitigate a high PI with quick lime or fly ash!!
RE: Expansive Soil Remediation with Calcium Carbide - what is the mix rate?
A few metal fab. friends of mine used to get together and fill up plastic trash bags with acetylene and shoot them from a distance. Fun stuff until some static electricity was created when they were filling one of the bags. Many of them could not hear properly for weeks and had a difficult time pulling melted plastic off of their faces.