A Study on the Use of Powder Zeolite as Backfill Material for Single Rod Grounding System

Abstract

One way to reduce the value of grounding resistance is to replace the electrodes’ backfill material with other materials such as; gypsum, charcoal powder, and bentonite. In this paper we report the use of zeolite powder as a backfill material to bury the electrodes of the grounding system. The purpose of this research is to compare zeolite and pure soil to be used as a backfill material. The type of electrode used is a single rod electrode. The parameters measured were grounding resistance, rain intensity, moisture and pH of the backfill material. Measurements were taken every day for 30 days. It was found that zeolite as a backfill material is better than pure soil which is often used so far. It is seen that the resistance value of grounding system using rod that buried in zeolite as a backfill material is lower than a half of the resistance value of grounding system when using pure soil as a backfill material. From this research it was also found that the moisture of the backfill material was higher by using zeolite than pure soil.