COLLECTION OF PORE LIQUIDS IN VADOSE ZONE

In situ collection of pore liquids is a difficult problem. This need is what drove the inventor, Carl Keller, to the concept of everting/inverting liners for sample collection. The Absorber FLUTe system uses a liner to press absorbent material against the hole wall to wick the liquids in the pore space or fractures into the absorbers. The absorbers, on the outside of the liner, are inverted into the interior of the liner as it is removed from the hole by a “peeling” process. This inversion/removal is done under pressure to prevent the contact of the absorbers with any other part of the hole.

The absorbers are used to wick liquids containing radio nuclides, dissolved solids in water, and pure contaminant products from the vadose pore space. On rare occasions, the absorbers are used to wick fracture flows below the water table.

The advantages of the Absorber FLUTe system are:

• The ease of installation of absorbent material against the hole wall
• The uniform pressure urging the absorber against the hole wall
• The isolation of one absorber from another by the sealing liner
• The electrical monitoring of absorption rate
• The ease of recovery of the absorbers without other contact and with protection against volatilization of the dissolved phase.
• The reuse of the carrier liner system

Particularly useful applications in Landfill Monitoring are possible when the absorbers are emplaced via horizontal passages, pre built or bored, under the landfill.

Color reactive absorbers have been used to map fractures and to assess the inflow rate from very slowly seeping fractures. Installations have been done in holes and pipes in all directions, even vertically upward from air pressure canisters.

The mechanism is described at Absorber FLUTe method (basic mechanics) and at Absorber FLUTe system (basic geometry). Prices are at Absorber FLUTe prices.

Another application that has not been exploited is the ability to install a suction lysimeter(s) attached to an everting liner. The porous cup can be small and located in a “tea bag” of silica flour or similar material. Once in place and pressed against the hole wall, the system can be wetted by water injection into the porous cup of the lysimeter. By using a pressure water recovery system, one should be able to install many suction lysimeters in a single hole and sample them as needed. Such a liner could be water filled with a tracer in the water to assure that the lysimeters are sampling formation water and not liner water.

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