RAFT: A simulator for ReActive Flow and Transport of groundwater contaminants

Abstract

This report documents the use of the simulator RAFT for the ReActive flow and Transport of groundwater contaminants. RAFT can be used as a predictive tool in the design and analysis of laboratory and field experiments or it can be used for the estimation of model/process parameters from experiments. RAFT simulates the reactive transport of groundwater contaminants in one, two-, or three-dimensions and it can model user specified source/link configurations and arbitrary injection strategies. A suite of solvers for transport, reactions and regression are employed so that a combination of numerical methods best suited for a problem can be chosen. User specified coupled equilibrium and kinetic reaction systems can be incorporated into RAFT. RAFT is integrated with a symbolic computational language MAPLE, to automate code generation for arbitrary reaction systems. RAFT is expected to be used as a simulator for engineering design for field experiments in groundwater remediation including bioremediation, reactive barriers and redox manipulation. As an integrated tool with both the predictive ability and the ability to analyze experimental data, RAFT can help in the development of remediation technologies, from laboratory to field.