Date
11 May 1984, 8:00 am - 10:30 am
Abstract
This paper describes the results of an extensive investigation made to determine the cause of excessive settlements of two 800 MN steam turbine units located at the Four Corners Steam Electric Station near Farmington, New Mexico. The units are located on a clay-shale formation with numerous gypsum seams. The settlement was originally attributed to the solutioning of these gypsum seams. It was found that the construction of a large unlined cooling pond raised the ground water table in the vicinity of the power plant. In this saturated environment, a chemical attack of the existing clay shales began. It is believed that the chemical reaction causing the degradation of the clay-shale has been identified and that a chemical solution to the problem has been found. The reaction involves the removal of the exchangeable cation from the clay lattice, which goes into solution. As the cations are leached out, the clays tend to weather toward the montmorillonite end of the transformation series.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
1st Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
University of Missouri--Rolla
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 1984 University of Missouri--Rolla, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Glos, G. H. and Hinkle, D., "A Case History of Chemical Attack of a Clay Shale" (1984). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 2.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/1icchge/1icchge-theme9/2
A Case History of Chemical Attack of a Clay Shale
This paper describes the results of an extensive investigation made to determine the cause of excessive settlements of two 800 MN steam turbine units located at the Four Corners Steam Electric Station near Farmington, New Mexico. The units are located on a clay-shale formation with numerous gypsum seams. The settlement was originally attributed to the solutioning of these gypsum seams. It was found that the construction of a large unlined cooling pond raised the ground water table in the vicinity of the power plant. In this saturated environment, a chemical attack of the existing clay shales began. It is believed that the chemical reaction causing the degradation of the clay-shale has been identified and that a chemical solution to the problem has been found. The reaction involves the removal of the exchangeable cation from the clay lattice, which goes into solution. As the cations are leached out, the clays tend to weather toward the montmorillonite end of the transformation series.
