Characterization of Contaminant Transport by Gravity, Capillarity and Barometric Pumping in Heterogeneous Vadose Zones
This final report summarizes the work and accomplishments of our three-year project. We have pursued the concept of a Vadose-Zone Observatory (VZO) to provide the field laboratory necessary for carrying out the experiments required to achieve the goals of this research. Our approach has been (1) to carry out plume release experiments at a VZO allowing the acquisition of several different kinds of raw data that (2) are analyzed and evaluated with the aid of highly detailed, diagnostic numerical models. The key feature of the VZO constructed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is the variety of plume-tracking techniques that can be used at a single location. Electric resistance tomography (ERT) uses vertical arrays of electrodes across the vadose zone that can monitor electrical resistance changes in the soil as a plume moves downward to the water table. These resistance changes can be used to provide ''snapshots'' of the progress of the plume. Additionally, monitoring wells have been completed at multiple levels in the vicinity of a central infiltration site. Sensors emplaced at different levels include electrically conducting gypsum blocks for detecting saturation changes, thermistors for monitoring temperature changes and pressure transducers for observing barometric changes at different levels in the vadose regime. The data from these sensors are providing important information about the state of the gas- and liquid-phase dynamics of the infiltration process. Similarly, access ports at different levels have been used to supply gas-phase samples while lysimeters yield liquid-phase samples. Studies involving gas-phase tracers were carried out at LLNL and at an Orange County Water District site in southern California to evaluate the time-dependent chemical signature of a plume that was spiked with an array of dissolved noble-gas tracers. Our work also correlate chemical signatures with those of the above-mentioned sensors that track the physical changes in the vadose zone. From the VZO at the LLNL site and from 3-D diagnostic simulations of our very first tracer-spiked plume infiltration event, we produced a much better understanding of the implications of soil heterogeneity for unsaturated zone contaminant transport at DOE sites. Even though the LLNL VZO site is considered to be hydrologically ''tight'' owing to the low permeability of the clays and silts that dominate the soil formations there, we find that saturation increases resulting from a near-surface ''leak'' reach the water table across the 20-meter-thick vadose zone in only tens of hours. This rapid transport at the site cannot be accurately simulated by layered models that derive their hydrologic properties from borehole-soil samples. In the LLNL vadose zone, layered infiltration models clearly underpredict of the rate of contaminant infiltration to the water table. Chemical transport simulations based on layered models of the Hanford vadose zone also appear to drastically underpredict contaminant migration. Furthermore, only simulations assuming a heterogeneous regime ''threaded'' by extremely high-permeability pathways can explain the rapid increase in saturation observed with ERT near the water table. Three-dimensional predictive models of a hypothetical tritiated water leak that are based on the above mentioned VZO infiltration-experiment diagnostic models were run. Tritiated water is an excellent conservative tracer and the infiltration simulations predict, in very good agreement with VZO experiments, that a continuous hypothetical tritium release (2-3 liters/rein) would be expected to reach the water table at significant concentrations within days. The numerical model suggests that this arrival time is determined by the amount of time required, infiltrating liquid at a given rate, to flush one pore volume in the soil between the infiltration point and the water table. Another infiltration event monitored by ERT demonstrated that infiltration could occur even more rapidly (within hours) as a result of apparent ''fastpaths'' in the inhomogeneous soil regime. Because heterogeneity and ''fast paths'' are so important for understanding the transport of contaminants to the water table and such pathways are inherently three-dimensional, one- and even two-dimensional models of layered soils, as have sometimes been used at Hanford, are likely to be inadequate for evaluating vadose zone transport processes.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 15005709
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-ID-142784; TRN: US200324%%79
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 27 Feb 2001
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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