Abstract: | In coastal areas, excessive exploitation of groundwater causes seawater intrusion. In artificial recharge of aquifer remediation process, the replacement of saltwater and freshwater with each other causes colloid release, and permeability also decreases. In this paper, the aquifer samples containing minimal clay mineral(mainly illite) in Dagu River aquifer were used. Adopting horizontal column experiments, we studied the influences of seepage velocity and ionic strength on particle release, as well as the relationship between them. In the column experiments, the Critical Salt Concentration(CSC) of the Dagu River aquifer was determined as 0.05 mol L~(-1) approximately. This result was basically consistent with the DLVO theoretical calculation. For the constant seepage velocity, the salinity descending rate and partical release were slower, and the peak of particle concentration was lower. However, the total amount of released particles was almost constant at different salinity descending rate. For constant salinity descending rates, the peak of particle concentration decreased as seepage velocity increased, but the total amount of released particles rose up. The experiments also indicated the existence of a critical seepage velocity, which dropped with the decrease of salt concentration. When the concentration of Na Cl solution decreased from 0.17 mol L~(-1) to 0.06 mol L~(-1), the critical seepage velocity decreased from 3 cm min~(-1)to 2.5 cm min~(-1), which is consistent to the results predicted by DLVO theory. |