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Soil & Sediment Contamination, 17:316322, 2008

Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1532-0383 print / 1549-7887 online
DOI: 10.1080/15320380802143880

Membrane Behavior of Soil-Bentonite

Slurry-Trench Cutoff Walls
JEFFREY C. EVANS,1 CHARLES D. SHACKELFORD,2
SANG-SIK YEO,3 AND JOHN HENNING4
1

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Bucknell University,

Lewisburg, PA, USA
2
Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA
3
Geosyntec Consultants, San Diego, CA, USA
4
Dawood Engineering, Canonsburg, PA, USA
Investigations of membrane behavior in bentonite-based soil-bentonite (SB) backfills
used in vertical cutoff walls for waste containment and site remediation have yielded
encouraging results. Laboratory investigations using model soil-bentonite materials as
well as samples obtained during slurry wall construction have been tested for membrane
behavior. The results indicate that two model backfills, a natural clay with 89% fines
and a mixture of clean sand with 5% by weight of dry sodium bentonite, act as semipermeable membranes. The chemico-osmotic efficiency coefficients, , for the natural
clay range from 0.018 to 0.024, whereas for the sand-bentonite backfill range from
0.118 to 0.166. The two SB backfills recovered from the field also exhibited membrane
behavior, with ranging from 0.0119 to 0.0140 for a backfill recovered from a cutoff
wall in New Jersey and from 0.0019 to 0.0172 for a backfill recovered from a cutoff
wall in Delaware. Although the range of values for the field SB backfills was lower
than that for the model SB backfills, modeling revealed that the measured membrane
behavior for the field SB backfills would result in a reduction in contaminant transport
by as much as 10% relative to that where membrane behavior is not considered.
Keywords soil-bentonite, slurry walls, osmosis, bentonite

Introduction
Containment and, in particular, slurry walls have been widely used for more than 25 years
to control the migration of contaminants in the subsurface. In the USA, vertical barriers
are most often constructed of soil-bentonite using the slurry trench method of construction
(Evans and Dawson, 1999). In this method, sodium bentonite is mixed with water to form
a viscous slurry that is pumped into a trench during excavation to maintain the trench
stability. The stable trench is then backfilled with a mixture of soil and slurry having a
consistency of high slump concrete. Historically, these barriers have been designed primarily
for low permeability, generally less than 109 m/s. Some investigations have pointed toward
improved performance through the use of admixtures that would both retard the transport
of contaminants and provide low permeability (Evans et al., 1990; Evans and Prince, 1997).
More recently, an evaluation of semi-permeable membrane behavior for geosynthetic clay
Address correspondence to Jeffrey C. Evans, Professor and Chair, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, USA. E-mail: evans@bucknell.edu

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liners (Malusis and Shackelford, 2002a) has been extended to soil-bentonite slurry-trench
cutoff walls (Yeo et al., 2005; Henning et al., 2006). Soil-bentonite (SB) cutoff-wall backfill
materials have been found to behave as semi-permeable membranes restricting the passage
of solutes (i.e., contaminants). As a result, they offer the promise of improved barrier
performance relative to barriers not demonstrating membrane behavior.

Membrane Behavior
A semi-permeable membrane is a porous material that allows the flow of a solvent (typically
water) but restricts the flow of the solute (e.g., aqueous miscible groundwater contaminants).
Clay soils have been shown to behave as semi-permeable membranes (McKelvey and Milne,
1962; Kemper and Rollins, 1966; Olsen, 1969; Kemper and Quirk, 1972; Marine and Fritz,
1981; Olsen et al., 1990; Shackelford et al., 2003). Clay membrane behavior in clay soils
results not only in restricted passage of solutes but also in chemico-osmosis, or the movement
of liquid from lower solute concentration to higher solute concentration (Katchalsky and
Curran, 1965; Kemper and Rollins, 1966; Olsen, 1969, 1972). The restricted movement
of charged solutes (ions) through the clay soil typically has been attributed to electrostatic
repulsion of the ions by electric fields associated with the diffuse-double layers of adjacent
clay particles (e.g., Hanshaw and Coplen, 1973; Marine and Fritz, 1981; Fritz and Marine,
1983; Fritz, 1986; Keijzer et al., 1997). Neutral (uncharged) solutes also can be restricted
when the size of the solute molecule is greater than the pore size, a situation often referred
to as steric hindrance (Grathwohl, 1998).
The extent of clay membrane behavior is quantified by the chemico-osmotic efficiency
coefficient, . For a clay soil exhibiting no solute restriction, is zero (= 0) whereas is
unity ( = 1) for a clay soil exhibiting complete solute restriction (i.e., membrane efficiency
of 100 percent). The values of for naturally occurring clay soils typically range from zero
(no membrane behavior) to less than unity (i.e., 0 < < 1). Porous media that exhibit solute
restriction and chemico-osmosis are called semi-permeable membranes, since they are
permeable to the solvent (water) regardless of the efficiency of solute restriction.

Factors Affecting Clay Membrane Behavior

Clay membrane behavior depends on mechanical, physical, and chemical factors, including
the stress-strain properties of the clay, the boundary and initial salt concentrations, the
types of solute species (ions), and the mineralogy of the soil (Shackelford et al., 2003).
For example, an increase in consolidation stress results in a decrease in porosity and a
corresponding increase in (see Figure 1). The increasing stress decreases porosity, which
results in smaller pore sizes and greater membrane efficiency.
The magnitude of the concentration difference across the membrane also affects the
membrane efficiency (see Figure 2). For a given porosity, decreases as the average salt
concentration across a clay membrane increases. This response is consistent with expected
behavior based on diffuse-double layer theory in that the thickness of the diffuse-double
layers of adjacent clay particles and, thus, the extent of influence of the ion-restricting
electric fields inside the soil pores, decreases as the ion concentration and cation charge in
the pore water increases (e.g., Fritz, 1986).
Under high stress conditions, membrane behavior can be observed in clays containing
relatively low activity clay minerals, such as kaolinite. However, in general, the potential
for membrane behavior increases with an increase in the amount of high activity clay

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Figure 1. Relations among consolidation stress, porosity, and membrane efficiency for kaolinite clay
(data from Olsen, 1969).

minerals in the soil. High activity clay minerals, such as sodium montmorillonite, also
have relatively high liquid limits, cation exchange capacities, and swelling potentials. Since
sodium bentonite typically contains significant amounts of sodium montmorillonite and
is a key component of SB cutoff walls, membrane behavior in the presence of common
electrolytes should be expected in SB cutoff walls. Indeed, such membrane behavior has
been demonstrated as documented in this paper.

Membrane Behavior in Soil-Bentonite Backfills for Cutoff Walls

Membrane behavior was studied in laboratory tests for two model soil-bentonite (SB) backfill mixtures consistent with those commonly used in SB vertical cutoff walls (Yeo, 2003;
Yeo et al., 2005). The two base soils for the two backfills consisted of 1) natural clay
with 89% (w/w) low plasticity fines, and 2) a mixture of sand with 5% by weight of dry
sodium bentonite. Specimens of both base soils were mixed with a sufficient amount of
bentonite-water slurry to correspond to 100-mm slump in accordance with standard practice for SB vertical cutoff walls. The membrane behavior was evaluated by measuring

Figure 2. Chemico-osmotic efficiency coefficients of bentonite specimens as a function of average

salt concentration across the specimen (data from Kemper and Rollins, 1966).

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Figure 3. Temporal trends in chemico-osmotic efficiency as a function of void ratio (e) for two
soil-bentonite backfills (data from Yeo 2003 and Yeo et al., 2005).

the membrane efficiency () resulting from maintaining a 3.88-mM KCl concentration

difference across the specimen. After a steady-state was achieved for the specimen
at an initial void ratio (e), the specimen was compressed to a new, lower void ratio until a new steady-state was achieved. This procedure was repeated such that a total of
three values were recorded for each SB backfill mixture, and the results are shown in
Figure 3.
The results indicate that both model backfill mixtures act as semi-permeable membranes, with ranging from 0.018 to 0.024 for the natural clay backfill mixture and from
0.118 to 0.166 for the sand-bentonite backfill mixture. The higher values for the sandbentonite backfill mixture illustrate the significance of the mineralogy of the clay portion
of the backfill mixtures. Also, more significant membrane behavior (higher ) is correlated
with lower void ratio (higher consolidation stress), as expected.
But what about the existence of membrane behavior in SB backfills mixed in the field
rather than model backfills mixed in the laboratory? To address this question, samples of two
SB backfills were recovered from cutoff walls constructed in Delaware and New Jersey and
were tested for the existence of membrane behavior (Henning, 2004). During construction
in the field, both SB backfills were mixed with 3 to 4% bentonite by dry weight with the
locally excavated soil. Both backfills were classified as clayey sands (i.e., SC and SP-SC
as per ASTM D 2487) with the fines portions classified as medium plastic clays (CL). The
results, shown in Figure 4, indicate that both backfills also exhibited membrane behavior.
However, the maximum values of ranged only from 0.0119 to 0.0140 for the backfill
from the cutoff wall in New Jersey, and only from 0.0019 to 0.0172 for the backfill from
the cutoff wall in Delaware (Henning et al., 2006). Thus, the magnitude of the membrane
behavior in the field mixed backfills is lower than that for model backfills prepared in the
laboratory. The lesser membrane behavior in the field mixed backfills is likely related to
lower clay content in field mixed samples relative to the model backfills. However, using
the membrane efficiencies () for the two construction-site backfills, calculations indicate
that the total liquid flux of cutoff walls comprised of the two backfills would be reduced by
as much as 1 to 10% for the cutoff wall in Delaware and 7 to 8% for the cutoff wall in New
Jersey, depending on the void ratio, due to the existence of the membrane behavior (Henning
et al., 2006). Thus, these data not only suggest that field-constructed SB cutoff walls do

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Figure 4. Chemico-osmotic pressure buildup resulting from establishing and maintaining a KCl
concentration difference across two real-world SB backfills recovered from the field and tested in the
laboratory (data from Henning, 2004).

exhibit membrane behavior, but that such behavior may result in even greater performance
efficiencies for SB vertical cutoff walls.

Benefits of Membrane Behavior in Slurry Walls

There are three mechanistic beneficial aspects of membrane behavior (Malusis et al., 2001,
2003; Shackelford et al., 2001) relevant to slurry walls. These are (1) hyperfiltration, (2)
chemico-osmotic flow, and (3) reduced diffusive mass transport. The advective flux is reduced by hyperfiltration by a factor of (1 ) due to the membrane behavior of the soil.
Chemico-osmotic flow results from the concentration gradient across the barrier due to solute restriction and the osmotic flow is towards the region of higher solute concentration. For
slurry walls used in typical containment configurations, chemico-osmotic flow is towards
the inside of containment, thereby reducing the net outward flux of the contaminants. The
reduced diffusive mass transport results from the decrease in the effective solute diffusion
coefficient, D , with increasing such that in the limit as 1, D 0, i.e., because
no solute can migrate through an ideal ( = 1) semi-permeable membrane (Malusis and
Shackelford, 2002b).
The potential significance of membrane behavior is illustrated in Figure 5 presenting
solute mass flux ratio at steady state through a 1-m-thick slurry wall incorporating semipermeable membrane behavior. In this plot, the flux ratio (flux with membrane behavior,
Jm , relative to the flux without membrane behavior, Jnm ) is plotted as a function of and
the hydraulic gradient (ih ). The results shown in Fig. 5 are based on simulations using
a coupled solute transport model and measured values for the D and as described by
Malusis (2001) and Malusis and Shackelford (2004). As shown in Fig. 5, Jm /Jnm is unity
in the absence of membrane behavior, i.e., for = 0. However, as membrane behavior
becomes more significant (i.e., as increases), the solute mass flux exiting the barrier is
increasingly reduced such that Jm < Jnm . For example, at a membrane efficiency of 60% (
= 0.6), the exit solute mass flux at steady state is only about 30% of that which would exist
in the absence of membrane behavior (i.e., Jm /Jnm 0.3). In the limit as 1, Jm /Jnm
0 because, by definition, there can be no solute mass transport through an ideal or perfect
membrane. Note that the results for the two cases where a hydraulic gradient is applied (i.e.,

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Figure 5. Effect of membrane behavior on solute mass flux at steady state through a 1-m-thick; ih =
hydraulic gradient; Jm = membrane steady-state solute flux; Jnm = non-membrane steady-state solute
flux (results from Malusis 2001 and Malusis and Shackelford, 2004).

ih = 10 and ih =100) are nearly the same as the results for the pure diffusion case (ih = 0)
because transport through the low permeability slurry wall is controlled by diffusion due to
the very low hydraulic conductivity of the backfill material.

Summary and Conclusions

Membrane behavior in clay soils is well documented and the results of recent experimental studies reported herein have documented the existence of membrane behavior in
soil-bentonite (SB) slurry-trench cutoff wall backfills. Example calculations demonstrate
that the existence of membrane behavior in SB cutoff walls can have an important beneficial
impact in terms of restricting the contaminant flux through such walls.

Acknowledgements
These studies for the data presented in this paper were part of a collaborative research effort
between Colorado State University and Bucknell University. Financial support for the study
was provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Arlington, VA, under Grant
CMS-0099430. The opinions expressed in this paper are solely those of the writers and are
not necessarily consistent with the policies or opinions of the NSF.

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