SmecTech Profile

Since 2006, Dr Will P Gates has been providing R&D and Consulting services to the bentonite, clay minerals and environmental liner industries in Australasia.  He has been professionally involved in clay mineral research since 1994 in North America, Europe and Australia. 

He holds a part-time Research fellow Position with the Department of Civil Engineering, Monash University. He was involved in developing bentonite specifications for the Victoria EPA 2010 Landfill Design.  Will is currently the President of the Australian Clay Minerals Society and is a Sustaining Member of The Clay Minerals Society and the Mineralogical Society of America.

Contact Smectech at

gateswp@smectech.com.au

Did you know? 

Bentonites are widely used as components of environmental barriers in landfills, tailings dams and impoundments. Not all bentonites behave the same when reacting with typical leachates in the environment, which means that each bentonite should be ‘compatibility’ tested and assessed for specific applications.

The above graph depicts the ratio of Fluid Loss at each concentration of NaCl to its value in deionised water. The fluid loss of even high performance bentonites can increase by 10—20 times in 5 M NaCl (about 10x the salinity of seawater).  Such behavior must be accounted for in designs by environmental engineers.

(Figure from Gates et al., submitted to the ACMS22 conference)

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