Minerology

[zaqqaz]

I am working on a project that consists of constructing a cap for a waste landfill. The local material consists of clayey minerals that include smectite. Smectite is very swelling material,thus we need to mix the local material with borrowed ones to limit its smectite. I wanted to run X-Ray diffraction test to measure the smectite content quantitatively. It seems that this is not an easy job,and most of the companies just conduct qualitative XRD test. My questions are:
1-Does any body have any similar experience that could share with me?
2-Do you know any company that could run the XRD testquantitatively?
3-Is there any other technique that I could use?

 

[henri2]

An expert in clay mineralogy, who is competent in quantitative analysis is what you are probably looking for. I'd imagine most are in academia, working in a department of geology, agronomy or materials science(clay ceramics division).

Good luck

 

[amanpreet]

any other thing that i would recommend is the use of geosynthetics product so , y0u can use the geotextiles to reduce the water ingress and that will automatically takes care of the swelliing phenomena of the soils.


regards
Amanpreet

 

[kumba]

Hi zaqqaz,
From my research experiences, I think that you don't need to perform these kind of tests only to quantify the amount of smectite in your soil. You must just focus on the Swelling properties of your soils. In the past I had used long time to identify the mineral properties of swelling soils in Senegal, west africa and what I think that if you only want to reduce the swelling properties of these soils, the solutions you had taken to mixe the swelling soils with an no active one is good, also using geotextile as barriers is also good. Just identify the magnitude of the swelling pressure and also try to identify these soils by simple soils charts as casagrande tables, etc.

Dr Meissa FALL