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Bentonite Based Grouts

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dudus

Civil/Environmental
Joined
Jun 12, 2006
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Location
US
I was recently blessed with researching the possibility of making bentonite based grouts with our sodium montmorillonite reserves. As I reviewed the industry standards, I have come to the conclusion that ultimately Permeability is the key factor in producing a succesful grout. After that was discovered, I consulted with ASTM Method D 5084 and became literally baffled at the amount of variables. I don't have a clue of sample preparation, equipment needed, method A-F? Does anyone out there have any experience in the field with bentonite based grouts? Am I going down the wrong path? Please advise.
 
I do not have such detailed experience; however, I believe the University of Houston (CIGMAT) of course near the oil patch has done quite a bit of technical work with (testing of etc.) grouts. I suspect a web search with some key words would turn up a lot of information on what they have done.
 
dudus,

A research project with a university sounds like an awfully good idea: you have a product that you would like to find a new market for, they have the brains and knowledge to research the properties of your product and determine how suitable it might be using (relatively speaking) cheap labor. Moreover, they have access to all kinds of neato equipment that a more commercial shop wouldn't find economical to obtain.

As an example, I was recently asked by a client if my engineering firm (whom I work for) would furnish a quote to perform a certain number of specialized tests per year. After looking into the cost to build the testing apparatus (none of our usual suppliers has a ready-made and engineered apparatus) I learned that it would cost on the order of 20,000 to design and build, whereas a midwest university had such an apparatus (at least at one time) and could probably perform the testing much more cheaply as their equipment was built for research and all the university needed to do was charge to recover labor costs to perform the tests.

Good luck.

Jeff
 
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