Significant Project Features:
- Soil-Bentonite Slurry Wall around a new landfill expansion
- 3,880 linear feet, 176,455 square feet, maximum depth of 58 feet
- Target Average Permeability of 1 x 10-7 cm/s
Background:
The Louisiana Pigment Company is located in Southwest Louisiana, 30 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. The Louisiana Pigment Company has been producing Titanium Dioxide pigment since 1992. The facility utilizes the chloride process and is capable of producing over 168,000 metric tons per year of treated TiO2 pigment.
Titanium Dioxide pigment is used in industry for generating hued paints, manufacturing primers and base coats, automotive finishes, and coatings for the exterior of buildings. Titanium dioxide can also be found in high-quality papers, color plastics, furniture panels, textile fibers, glass, ink, porcelain, toothpaste, cosmetics, candy, food coloring, PVC, white sidewall tires, and a list of other products.
Project Objectives:
The Louisiana Pigment Company currently has a slurry wall surrounding the existing north side landfill, which was constructed by Geo-Con in 1992-1993. Geo-Solutions was hired by Louisiana Pigment Company as the prime contractor to construct a slurry wall surrounding the south side landfill, which is part of the new landfill expansion. The new landfill slurry wall surrounding the south side landfill tied into the existing north side landfill slurry wall. The new landfill slurry wall will provide subsurface groundwater control in the south side landfill.
Description of Work:
The scope of Geo-Solutions’ work included the installation of a 3 foot wide by 176,455 vertical square feet (vsf) soil-bentonite (SB) slurry wall. The SB wall was 3,880 feet in length. The wall was installed to a maximum depth of 58 feet below the ground surface and was keyed into the underlying low permeability fat clay layer, defined as the aquitard.
Excavation was supported by bentonite slurry and performed using a Komatsu PC-800 with Geo-Solutions’ long-reach stick attachment. Bentonite slurry was produced on site using a slurry pond with water from onsite frac water tanks.
Trench spoils were blended with bentonite slurry to create a controlled backfill mix. Backfill was mixed alongside the trench using two excavators and was placed into the trench using the excavators. The target permeability for the SB wall was an average of 1 x 10-7 cm/s.
Geo-Solutions served as the prime contractor for the project. The scope of the work also included:
- Small amount of clearing
- Topsoil stripping
- Work platform preparation
- Soil cap construction in support of the new slurry cutoff wall
Geo-Solutions demonstrated quality safety practice on this project as the slurry wall was completed with no incidents, accidents or near misses.
Project Challenges:
Weather issues and mechanical issues with the Komatsu PC 800 were the main causes of delay to production throughout the project. Despite numerous delays due to weather and mechanical issues, Geo-Solutions managed to successfully complete the slurry wall work.
