Multidimensional, multicomponent, subsurface reactive transport in nonuniform velocity fields: code verification using an advective reactive streamtube approach

Abstract

High performance computing has made possible the development of high resolution, multidimensional, multicomponent reactive transport models that can be used to analyze complex geochemical environments. However, as increasingly complex processes are included in these models, the accuracy of the numerical formulation coupling the nonlinear processes becomes difficult to verify. Analytical solutions are not available for realistically complex problems and benchmark solutions are not generally available for specific problems. We present an advective reactive streamtube (ARS) transport technique that efficiently provides accurate solutions of nonlinear multicomponent reactive transport in nonuniform multidimensional velocity fields. These solutions can be compared with results from Eulerian-based advection–dispersion-reaction models to evaluate the accuracy of the numerical formulation used. The ARS technique includes mixed equilibrium and kinetic complexation and precipitation–dissolution reactions subject to the following assumptions: (1) transport is purely advective (i.e., no explicit diffusion or dispersion), and (2) chemistry is described by a canonical system of reactions that evolves with time and is unaffected by position in space. Results from the ARS technique are compared with results from the massively parallel, multicomponent reactive transport model MCTRACKER on a test problem involving irreversible oxidation of organic carbon and reaction of the oxidation products with two immobile mineral phases, gypsum and calcite, and fifteen aqueous complexes. Truncation error, operator splitting error, and the nonlinear transformation of these errors in the high-resolution reactive transport model are identified for this problem.