Natural air ventilation in underground galleries as a tool to increase radon sampling volumes for geologic monitoring

Abstract

A simple numerical model was implemented to infer airflow (natural ventilation) in underground tunnels from the differences in the temporal patterns of radon, 222Rn, concentration time-series that were measured at two distant points in the interior of the tunnels. The main purpose of this work was to demonstrate that the installation of radon monitoring stations closer to the entrance of the tunnels was sufficient to remotely analyse the distribution of radon concentration in their interiors. This could ease the monitoring of radon, since the effective sampling volume of a single monitoring station located closer to the entrance of a tunnel is approximately 30,000 times larger than the sampling volume of a sub-soil radon sensor. This methodology was applied to an underground gallery located in the volcanic island of Tenerife, Canary Islands. This island constitutes an ideal laboratory to study the geo-dynamical behaviour of radon because of the existence of a vast network of galleries that conforms the main water supply of the island.