Permeability and expansibility of sodium bentonite in dilute solutions

In developing the dynamic force balance model for colloidal expansion, it was acknowledged that accurate description of the viscous drag force, or equivalently the permeability, is very important to describe the swelling process of compacted bentonite as it expands and eventually turns from a gel into a sol in low ionic strength waters. We therefore developed a Kozeny–Carman-like equation to quantify the permeability of the purified and fully Na-exchanged bentonite in dilute homoionic solutions, based on a set of permeability measurements. The force balance model, together with a friction model derived from the permeability, is then validated against accurate observations of the expansion process of the Na-exchanged bentonite in a water filled vertical test tube. The expansion is followed in detail over a month, by use of the magnetic resonance imaging technique with a spatial resolution of 0.2 mm, as an initially compacted tablet of Na-bentonite expands in water. The model accurately predicts not only the expansion rate and the general features of the expansion but also the basic behaviour at the expanding gel/sol interface. In addition, the use of the developed Kozeny–Carman-like equation substantiates that the expansion rate depends strongly on the friction of the particles against the water.