Numerical Analysis for Contaminant Transport using a Dual Reactive Domain Model

Contaminant transport in porous media is characterized by solving an advection-dispersion equation(ADE). The ADE can cover equilibrium phenomena of interest, which include sorption, decay, and chemical reactions. Among these phenomena, sorption mechanism is described by several types of sorption isotherm. If we assume the sorption isotherm as linear, the solution of ADE can be easily procured. However, if we consider the sorption isotherm as non-linear isotherm like a Dual Reactive Domain Model (DRDM), the resulting differential equation becomes non-linear. In this case, the solution of ADE cannot be easily acquired by an analytic method. In this paper, we present the numerical analysis of ADE using a DRDM. The results reveal that even if sorption data may be fitted well using linear or non-linear isotherm, the characteristics of contaminant transport of the two cases are different from each other. To be concrete, the retardation of linear isotherm has stronger effect than that of the DRDM. As the non-linearity of sorption isotherm increases, the difference of retardation effects of the two cases becomes larger. For a pulse source, the maximum concentration of the linear model is higher than that of the DRDM, but the plume of the DRDM moves faster than that of the linear model. Behaviors of contaminant transport using the DRDM are consistent with common features of a linear model. For instance, biodegradation effect becomes larger as time goes by The faster the seepage velocity is, the faster the plume of contaminant moves. The plume of the contaminant is distributed evenly over overall domain in the event of high dispersion coefficient.