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Estimation of Hydrateable Surface Area of Soils and Clays from the Amount of Absorption and Retention of Ethylene Glycol^{1, 2,}

ABSTRACT

A modification of the glycol retention method for estimating hydrateable surface areas is proposed. In this modification, a large amount of glycol-bentonite mixture, containing just enough glycol to form a monolayer on all bentonite surfaces, is used to "buffer" the glycol vapor pressure in an evacuated desiccator. Dry and glycol-saturated samples placed in the desiccator then gain and lose glycol, respectively, until approximately a monolayer exists on all hydrateable surfaces at equilibrium. The average amount of glycol on the two samples at this equilibrium is used, as in previous glycol retention methods, to estimate the hydrateable surface area.

The Bower and Gschwend procedure is used to estimate the amount of glycol necessary to form a complete monolayer on all surfaces of the bentonite to be used in the buffer mixture. This amount of glycol is much easier to estimate in a fairly pure clay with large, well characterized surface area than in soil samples, and some possible errors of former techniques may be avoided by the proposed procedure.

¹ Joint contribution of the Colorado Agr. Exp. Sta., Fort Collins, and the Soil and Water Conservation Research Division, ARS, USDA. Authorized for publication as Colorado Agr. Exp. Sta. Sci. Jour. Ser. No. 541. This work was partially supported by funds from Regional Research Project W-30.

² Authors gratefully acknowledge the guidance of Dr. W. R. Schmehl, Professor of Soil Chemistry at Colorado State University, and the help of R. F. Miller, at Geological Survey, Federal Center, Denver, during the X-ray diffraction studies.

³ Graduate assistant and Soil Physicist, respectively.

Received for publication August 6, 1958. Accepted for publication November 25, 1958.