Evaluation of Water Vapor Sorption Isotherms to Quantify Wildfire Ash in Soil
Publication: Geo-Congress 2023
ABSTRACT
Movement of wildfire ash into soil can alter soil hydrologic behavior and consequently influences the stability of burned hillslopes. There are no standard methods to quantify the concentration of ash in soil. This paper evaluates water vapor sorption as an index test for ash quantification. Soil and ash samples collected after the 2021 Green Ridge Fire, WA, were dry-mixed in mass-controlled ratios and the water vapor isotherms were measured. Ash gave smaller specific surface area than soil, but the maximum adsorbed water content of ash was greater than that of soil because of relative amounts of adsorbed and capillary water. The best-fit of various isotherm models was evaluated to represent the measured data. The results suggested that the Guggenheim-Anderson-de Boer (GAB) model well represents (R2~0.99) the isotherms of ash-soil mixtures and the GAB parameter (kb) can be used to quantify ash in soil. However, the nonlinear increase in kb with ash content suggested a stepwise calibration that changes at 25% ash content.
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Information
Published In
Geo-Congress 2023
Pages: 619 - 629
History
Published online: Mar 23, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Ashes
- Chemical properties
- Chemistry
- Disaster risk management
- Disasters and hazards
- Engineering materials (by type)
- Environmental engineering
- Gases
- Geomechanics
- Geotechnical engineering
- Materials engineering
- Natural disasters
- Soil dynamics
- Soil gas
- Soil mechanics
- Soil properties
- Soil stabilization
- Soil water
- Soil water movement
- Wild fires
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