Abstract
Transverse dispersive mixing plays an important role in controlling natural attenuation of contaminant plumes and the performance of engineered remediation strategies. The extent of transverse mixing can be significantly affected by porous media heterogeneity and anisotropy. For instance, flow focusing in the high-permeability inclusions leads to an enhancement of dilution and reactive mixing in steady-state solute transport. Numerous modeling studies have been performed to understand the mechanism of conservative and reactive transport in homogeneous and complex heterogeneous porous media. However, experimental investigations are necessary to show an intuitive phenomenon and to validate the modeling results. This paper briefly reviews recent laboratory experimental studies on dilution and reactive mixing of steady-state transport in saturated homogeneous and heterogeneous porous media. In this context, setups and measuring techniques are described in pore-scale and Darcy-scale experiments. Parameters quantifying dilution and reactive mixing in the experiments are also introduced. Finally, we discuss the further experimental works necessary to deepen our understanding of dilution and reactive mixing in natural aquifers.
Highlights
The study of dilution and reactive mixing in porous media is of pivotal importance in a variety of scientific fields and technical applications
Both dilution and mixing of the plumes are caused by dispersion, and the extents of both processes are affected by the heterogeneity and anisotropy of the porous media [1,2,3]
Pore-scale experiments are essential for the investigation of dilution and reactive mixing of solute transport
Summary
The study of dilution and reactive mixing in porous media is of pivotal importance in a variety of scientific fields (e.g., contaminant hydrology, reservoir engineering) and technical applications (e.g., groundwater treatment, nuclear waste storage). At the front of the plume does longitudinal dispersion play an important role in steady-state plume transport This can be reflected by the steep concentration gradients found at the fringes of groundwater plumes in the field investigations of contaminant aquifers [12,13,14,15]. Numerous modeling studies have been conducted to investigate transverse dispersion of conservative and reactive solutes in homogeneous and heterogeneous porous media [16,17,18,19]. The objectives of this paper are to give a brief review of two-dimensional and three-dimensional experiments studying steady-state conservative and reactive transport in saturated porous media, discuss their effectiveness and limitations, and review the influence of the heterogeneity and anisotropy of porous media arrangements on solute transport. We focus on the recent advances in the experimental works studying dilution and reactive mixing
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