Bentonite re-saturation. Limited access to water and high temperature gradients

Two water uptake experiments with compacted MX-80 bentonite have been performed: an isothermal experiment with limited access of confined pre-compacted bentonite to water and a non-isothermal experiment aiming at the final state of hydration against a temperature gradient. In both cases, the experimental effort was quite high and quite a variety of different set-ups have been tried in order to achieve reasonable results. Since the key results have been published earlier this report focusses more on the different test concepts which are explained in detail, and on the reasons why they failed. It proved to be unavoidable, though, to come up with more insight and understanding of the results while writing this work. One or two new aspects and conclusions are therefore reported here as well.