Abstract
Due to the uneven distribution of pollutions and blur edge of pollutant area, there will exist uncertainty of source term shape in advective-diffusion equation model of contaminant transport. How to generalize those irregular source terms and deal with those uncertainties is very critical but rarely studied in previous research. In this study, the fate and transport of contaminant from rectangular and elliptic source geometry were simulated based on a three-dimensional analytical solute transport model, and the source geometry generalization guideline was developed by comparing the migration of contaminant. The result indicated that the variation of source area size had no effect on pollution plume migration when the plume migrated as far as five times of source side length. The migration of pollution plume became slower with the increase of aquifer thickness. The contaminant concentration was decreasing with scale factor rising, and the differences among various scale factors became smaller with the distance to field increasing.
Highlights
Concern about contamination of the subsurface environment has greatly stimulated research of solute transport phenomena in porous media
(1) The migration of pollution plume from the two source geometries shows the same trend under the same aspect ratio, the equal source area size, and the uniform total pollution load condition, except that the migration of pollution plume from rectangular source geometry is faster than that from elliptic source geometry
(2) The influence of source area size on pollution plume migration decreases with the distance to field increasing
Summary
Concern about contamination of the subsurface environment has greatly stimulated research of solute transport phenomena in porous media. Due to the complex condition in reality, such as uneven distribution of pollutions and blur edge of pollutant area, the shape of pollution plume is not explicit in the initial period of contaminated site investigation On this background, there will exist uncertainty of source term shape in ADE model of contaminant transport. It can answer the questions of “how to use the regular source geometry to substitute the irregular source geometry” and “what regular source geometry can be used for substitution.” It can help technicians examine and predict the contaminant transport in subsurface flow systems in actual site remediation. We start from identifying contaminant from regular (i.e., rectangular and elliptic) source geometry, investigating its application scope and condition from its analytical solutions of ADE as well as the corresponding influence factors. The obtained results will provide useful information and technical support for estimating the distribution of contaminant concentration in the initial period of contaminated site investigation
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
