Liner Action Leakage Rate: Water Balance Test or Geoelectric Integrity Survey?

摘要

When geomembrane liners are installed to contain wastes and liquids it is good practice to specify a maximum allowable (Action) leakage rate and to ensure that this ALR is not exceeded prior to putting the facility into service. This is easy to do with double lining systems. It is more difficult with single geomembrane liners. The only solution is to fill the facility full of water and to measure the rate of decrease in water level. This requires allowance for evaporation and incident precipitation. This is slow, inaccurate and expensive.rnAn alternative is to do a geoelectric integrity survey on the installed geomembrane to locate and repair all holes prior to the facility being filled with water. A geoelectric survey will detect and locate holes down to 1 mm in diameter. This is fast, inexpensive, and accurate compared to a water balance test. All geomembrane liners should be tested this way.