Journal of the Korean Geo-Environmental Society ISSN:1598-0820(Print) 2714-1233(Online) 한국지반환경공학회 논문집

Soil-water characteristic curve, which is called soil retention curve, is required to explore water flows in unsaturated soils, relative permeability of water in multi-phase fluids flow, and change to stiffness and volume of soils. Thus, the understanding of soil-water characteristic curves of soils help us explore the behavior of soils inclduing fluids. Biopolymers are environmental-friendly materials, which can be completely degraded by microbes and have been believed not to affect the nature. Thus, various biopolymers such as deacetylated power, polyethylene oxide, xanthan gum, alginic acid sodium salt, and polyacrylic acid have been studies for the application to soil remediation, soil improvement, and enhanced oil recovery. PAA (polyacrylic acid) is one of biopolymers, which have shown a great effect in enhanced oil recovery as well as soil remediation because of the improvement of water-flood performance by mobility control. The study on soil-water characteristic curves of sandy soils containing PAA (polyacrylic acid) has been conducted through experimentations and theoretical models. The results show that both capillary entry pressure and residual water saturation dramatically increase according to the increased concentration of PAA (polyacrylic acid). Also, soil-water characteristic curves by theoretical models are quite well consistent with the results by experimental studies. Thus, soil-water characteristic curves of sandy soils containing biopolymers such as PAA (polyacrylic acid) can be estimated using fitting parameters for the theoretical model.