Effect of bentonite particles’ presence on two-dimensional chromium transmission

Abstract

The co-transport of pollutants with colloidal particles to lower depths of groundwater and porous environments has been demonstrated in many studies in recent three decades. Despite the numerous researches, all experimental and numerical studies of pollutant transfer in the presence of colloidal particles have been carried out in one dimension, which causes significant errors in this phenomenon. In this study, the two-dimensional transfer experiment of chromium in the presence of bentonite colloidal particles is done in saturated porous media. In order to conduct the experiment in two-dimensional conditions, the sampling was done in central and lateral of the last experiment column section. The results have been demonstrated that the transmission along the longitudinal direction is higher than lateral in the three tests of the transfer of chromium, bentonite, and chromium in the presence of bentonite colloidal particles at the beginning of the experiment, and due to completed mixing in the section, it reached to a constant value as lateral samples. While the presence of bentonite colloidal particles facilitates the transfer of chromium in both longitudinal and lateral directions, increasing the bentonite colloidal particle concentration causes more getting stuck of colloid particles between the sand grains and reduction of the chromium transfer in both longitudinal and lateral directions. So, it can be concluded that transfer in the lateral direction is lower in bentonite colloidal particles compared with chromium, and the reason is the bentonite colloidal particles getting stuck between sand grains, which is exacerbated by increasing the concentration of the bentonite. Also, due to the chromium co-transport with colloid particles in the fraction of chromium total transport, increasing the bentonite concentration causes decreasing the chromium lateral transfer.