Co-transport of less soluble accessory minerals during expansion of compacted bentonite and its impacts on erosion

Compacted bentonite is considered as an engineered barrier in geological disposal of nuclear waste in fractured rocks. One concern with this concept is that the expansion of bentonite into fractures as the system saturates may lead to its erosion by flowing water. The loss of bentonite through erosion over long times may compromise the barrier. Commercial bentonite contains less soluble accessory minerals and experimental observations have shown that these are co-transported with clay minerals during expansion and form a mineral film at the eroding boundary. Quantifying the effects of the mineral film on the erosion rate is important for the assessment of the long-term sealing capacity of bentonite barriers. The paper presents a model for the extrusion of bentonite into fractures that considers key processes governing the co-transport of less soluble accessory minerals and explains why and where the mineral film forms and how it affects the erosion rate.
The model is tested against two sets of published experimental data. It is demonstrated that the model predicts the phenomena observed in experiments: the build-up of a mineral film near the extrusion boundary; and the progressive growth of the mineral film thickness. Importantly, the model allows for investigating the effects of key environmental and material parameters – water chemistry, filtration coefficient, and mineral fraction – on the expansion and erosion. The results of such investigations are presented. It is shown that higher water ion concentration, larger filtration coefficient, and larger fraction of accessory minerals retard the swelling and extrusion of bentonite, thus reducing the overall erodibility. It is further shown that the presence of less soluble accessory minerals may reduce the loss of bentonite by a factor of 2 compared to a pure bentonite.