Abstract
Bentonite clay is most commonly used as a landfill liner but is resource-intensive and suffers drawbacks like large volume change and desiccation cracking. It also poses construction difficulties and the handling of a large volume of material. In situ soil can be successfully modified into base liners for landfills which offers an economical and sustainable alternative to bentonite liners. In this study, an exocellular biopolymer, xanthan gum, is used to improve the in situ soil and provides a novel alternative liner material. A comparative study is also made by modifying the in situ soil with various percentage of bentonite. The results show that the maximum dry density of the in situ soil increased marginally for both the additives. Hydraulic conductivity decreased from 2.87 × 10–3 to 4.46 × 10–8 cm/s at 1% xanthan gum addition while in case of bentonite it reduces to 4.81 × 10–8 cm/s at 30% addition. This significant reduction in hydraulic conductivity on stabilizing soil with xanthan gum is attributed to gel coating on the soil surface and gel plug formation in the soil matrix, confirmed by morphological studies. Choice of xanthan gum for stabilizing soil and modifying it into baseliners is economical than bentonite clay. The mechanism of bio-plugging in xanthan gum stabilized soil will also control leachate movement through the soil. Hence, xanthan gum, a renewable, sustainable and carbon negative biopolymer, can be successfully used to modify in situ soil into clay liner.
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The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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The authors thank the Vice Chancellor of the SASTRA Deemed University, Thanjavur, for the support and the infrastructure facilities provided during this study. The authors thank the anonymous reviewer and the editor for their time and effort in helping us improve the manuscript.
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Anandha Kumar, S., Sujatha, E.R. Assessing the potential of xanthan gum to modify in-situ soil as baseliners for landfills. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 19, 10613–10624 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-021-03721-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-021-03721-4