Measurement of effect of chemical reactions on the hydrologic properties of fractured glass media using a tri-axial flow and transport apparatus

Abstract

Summary Understanding the effect of chemical reactions on the hydrologic properties of sub-surface media is critical to many natural and engineered sub-surface systems. Methods and information for such characterization of fractured media are severely lacking. Influence of glass corrosion (precipitation and dissolution) reactions on fractured glass blocks HAN28 and LAWBP1, two candidate waste glass forms for a proposed immobilized low-activity waste (ILAW) disposal facility at the Hanford, WA site, was investigated. Flow and tracer transport experiments were conducted in such randomly and multiply fractured ILAW glass blocks, before and after subjecting them to corrosion using vapor hydration testing (VHT) at 200 °C temperature and 200 psig (1379 KPa) pressure, causing the precipitation of alteration products. A tri-axial fractured media flow and transport experimental apparatus, which allows the simultaneous measurement of flow and transport properties and their anisotropy, has been designed and built for this purpose. Such apparatus for fractured media characterization are being reported in the literature only recently. Hydraulic properties of fractured blocks were measured in different orientations and along different cardinal directions, before and after glass corrosion reactions. Miscible displacement experiments using a non-reactive dye were also conducted, before and after glass corrosion reactions, to study the tracer transport behavior through such media. Initial efforts to analyze breakthrough curve (BTC) data using a 1D advection dispersion equation (ADE) solution revealed that a different fractured media transport model, which accurately accounts for the heterogeneous transport behavior in 3D, may be necessary for such interpretation. It was found that glass reactions could have a significant influence on the hydrologic properties of fractured ILAW glass media. The methods and results are useful to better understand the effect of chemical reactions on the hydrologic properties of fractured geomedia in general and glass media in particular.