Permeation of contaminants through water saturated soils

An attempt has been made to simulate the passage of a contaminant (kerosene oil) through a water saturated soil by conducting centrifuge modelling. Such experiments are of importance because soil (compacted) barriers are widely used to contain water, chemicals and potentially hazardous materials (pollutants) from municipal and toxic waste facilities because of their low hydraulic conductivity. The lack of understanding of the factors affecting the conductivity of soils with different fluids indicates that the conductivity of mixtures of organic fluids cannot reliably be determined from simple laboratory tests using water as the permeant. Hence the tests have been performed on water saturated samples permeated with kerosene.