Abstract
The influence of small amounts of clay minerals on the hydraulic conductivity of sandy aquifer was investigated by laboratory experiments. Admixture of up to 1.5% by weight of clay minerals to sand did not cause any measurable decrease of hydraulic conductivity for seawater. Increasing the clay fraction from 1.5% to 10% decreased hydraulic conductivity by one order of magnitude. Montmorillonite caused the strongest decrease; the effect of kaolinite and illite was only half as large. When seawater was flushed by freshwater, hydraulic conductivity of the montmorillonite-sand mixture decreased drastically. However, flushing with freshwater did not measurably affect the hydraulic conductivity of an illite-sand or kaolinite-sand mixture. The explanation for this behaviour is the capability of various types of clay to adsorb different quantities of water between their platelets which induces a gel-droplet formation process. This is governed by the chemical composition and the ionic strength of the solution.
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