Placement of Colloidal Silica gel for the construction of a subsurface containment system

A subsurface containment system which is constructed by pumping a gelling liquid (Colloidal Silica) into the unsaturated medium is investigated by developing a mathematical model and conducting numerical simulations. The proposed model is verified by comparing experimentally and numerically determined hydraulic conductivities of gel-treated soil columns at different Colloidal Silica (CS) injection volumes. The numerical experiments indicate that an impermeable gel layer is formed within the time period twice the gel-point. At the Same normalized time, the CS solutions with lower NaCl concentrations result ill further migration and poor Performance in plugging the pore space.