Updated on 2024/04/27

写真a

 
RUAN, Kunlin
 
Affiliation
Faculty of Science and Engineering, School of Creative Science and Engineering
Job title
Assistant Professor(without tenure)
 

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Internal Special Research Projects

  • ペレット状ベントナイトの飽和過程における膨潤圧に及ぼす温度の影響

    2023  

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    Addressing issuesrelated to high level radioactive waste(HLW) from nuclear power industry is an important task for researchers. Deep geological disposal method, which intends to seal HLWdeeply underground, was chosen by many countries to deal with HLW. In a Japanese deep geological disposal project,a multi-barrier system, including vitrified waste, stainless over-pack containers, buffermaterials, and hostrock, is planned to be constructed more than 300 munderground to prevent the leakage of HLW. As indicated by numerous studies, bentonites and theirbased materials were selectedas candidate buffer materials because of their low permeability. Pelletedbentonite has recently been considered as a candidate buffer material. Thepurpose of using pelleted bentonite as a buffer material is to avoid thechallenges identified in the full-scale mock-up study, such as improvedworkability during barrier installation. Bentonite pellets can be installedusing pneumatic projection techniques, which makes backfilling operationseasier and potentially robotic.In addition to low permeability, anotherimportant characteristic of bentonite is its highself-healing ability. As important ingredients for evaluating self-healing capacity, swellingpressures (ps) duringsaturation, including pressures at peak (ppeak),valley (pvalley), re-peak(pre-peak) and equilibrium(peq) points in swellingcurve had beenstudied by experiments. Amongthose swelling pressures, most scholars examined peq instead of ppeak,pvalley, and pre-peak. However, experimental conditions strongly affect ppeak, pvalley and pre-peak.Meanwhile,findings from the study of ppeak,pvalley, and pre-peak can elucidate the swelling mechanisms duringsaturation. Devoting greaterattention and making greatereffort to assess ppeak, pvalley, and pre-peak are necessary.In this study, swelling pressure tests were conducted at25, 50, and 80 °C to elucidate temperature effect on swelling pressures at peak, valley, re-peak andequilibrium points (ppeak,pvalley, pre-peak and peq) in swelling pressure evolution curve. A pellet bentonite, Kunigel-GX,was used to investigate ppeak,pvalley, pre-peak, and peqat different temperatures. Experimentallyobtained results were the followings: 1) ppeak, pvalley, pre-peak, and peq of Kunigel-GX decreased as temperature rises and increased as dry density increases; 2) Kunigel-GX was found to have larger values of (peq-pvalley) at higher dry density and lower temperature conditions.