Abstract
Abstract Bentonites are extensively studied for their application in radioactive waste repositories as potential buffer material to isolate high-level nuclear waste owing to its high swelling capacity and low hydraulic conductivity. The field-scale studies on bentonite buffer material revealed the presence of various humidity conditions when the compacted specimens are subjected to repository conditions in the underground facility. Study on hydration kinetics of compacted bentonite clays under different humidity conditions is very important for the performance evaluation of the facility. The vapor hydration kinetics of candidate buffer material was presented in this work. The influence of bentonite plasticity, compaction density, and vapor pressure on the sorption kinetics was explained with the underlying mechanisms. The hydration kinetics of powder bentonite specimens subjected to saturated vapor pressure environment was also studied to understand the presence of different hydration mechanisms. Rectangular hyperbola method was used for linearizing the kinetic sorption data. The procedure for predicting sorption rate and equilibrium water content using the initial trend was given in this work. The proposed method was validated on different measured data sets of sorption isotherms. The proposed method was satisfactory in linearizing the sorption data and estimating the equilibrium water content under different compaction densities and humidity conditions on the studied bentonites.
Published Version
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