Recent studies on water retention behaviour of biochar amended soil rarely considers the effect of pyrolysis temperature and also feedstock type into account. It is well known that pyrolysis temperature and feedstock type influences the physical and chemical properties of biochar due to stagewise decomposition of structure and chemical bonds. Further, soil density, which is in a loose state (in agricultural applications) and dense (in geo-environmental engineering applications) can also influence water retention behaviour of biochar amended soils. The major objective of this study is to investigate the water retention properties of soil amended with three different biochars in both loose and dense state. The biochars, i.e. water hyacinth biochar (WHB), chicken manure biochar (CMB) and wood biochar (WB) were produced in-house at different pyrolysis temperature. After then, biochars at 5% and 10% (w/w%) were amended to the soil. Water retention behaviour (soil suction and gravimetric water content) was studied under drying and wetting cycle simulated by varying relative humidity (RH, 50–90%). Results show that 10% WHB produced at 300 °C were found to possess highest water retention. CMB is found to possess higher water retention than WB for 10% amendment ratio. In general, the addition of three biochars (at both 300 °C and 600 °C) at 10% (w/w) significantly improved the water retention at all suction ranges in both loose and dense compaction state as compared to that of the bare soil. The adsorption (wetting) and desorption (drying) capacity of biochar amended soils is constant at corresponding RH.
Stabilization is one of the most preferred techniques of dealing with expansive soils. Several types of additives have been evolved and are successfully being used for this purpose. This paper evaluates the performance of a variety of additives categorized into (a) cementitious: lime and fly ash (b) non-cementitious: stone dust, and (c) chemical additives: CaCl 2 and Na 2 SiO 3 , when employed to stabilize three types of expansive soils used in the study. Attempts were also made to investigate the influence of valence of cations (viz., monovalent, divalent and trivalent) and mean particle diameter (d 50 ) of additive(s) on percentage reduction of swelling characteristics. Results reveal that each additive exhibits distinct response on the swelling behavior of expansive soils. It has been observed that chemical additives exhibit superior performance over cementitious and non-cementitious additives in reducing the swelling characteristics. Further, it has also been found that valence has profound influence on the swelling characteristics of expansive soils. As such, the degree of reduction of swelling was found significantly high when employed chemical additive consists of trivalent cations than its counterpart additive consists of mono-or divalent cations. Further, efforts were also devoted to correlate mean particle diameter of additives with swelling characteristics, and it was clearly evident from trends that an appreciable decrease in swelling characteristics occurs with decrease in mean particle diameter.
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