Final Report
- Colorado School of Mines
This project combines outcrop-scale heterogeneity characterization, laboratory experiments, and numerical simulations. The study is designed to test whether established dispersion theory accurately predicts the behavior of solute transport through heterogeneous media and to investigate the relationship between heterogeneity and the parameters that populate these models. The dispersion theory tested by this work is based upon the fractional advection-dispersion equation (fADE) model. Unlike most dispersion studies that develop a solute transport model by fitting the solute transport breakthrough curve, this project will explore the nature of the heterogeneous media to better understand the connection between the model parameters and the aquifer heterogeneity. Our work at the Colorado School of Mines was focused on the following questions: 1) What are the effects of multi-scale geologic variability on transport of conservative and reactive solutes? 2) Can those transport effects be accounted for by classical methods, and if not, can the nonlocal fractional-order equations provide better predictions? 3) Can the fractional-order equations be parameterized through a link to some simple observable geologic features? 4) Are the classical equations of transport and reaction sufficient? 5) What is the effect of anomalous transport on chemical reaction in groundwater systems? The work is predicated on the observation that upscaled transport is defined by loss of information, or spatio-temporal averaging. This averaging tends to make the transport laws such as Fick's 2nd-order diffusion equation similar to central limit theory. The fractional-order advection-dispersion equations rely on limit theory for heavy-tailed random motion that has some diverging moments. The equations predict larger tails of a plume in space and/or time than those predicted by the classical 2nd-order advection-dispersion equation. The heavy tails are often seen in plumes at field sites.
- Research Organization:
- Colorado School of Mines
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE; USDOE SC Office of Basic Energy Sciences (SC-22)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG02-07ER15841
- OSTI ID:
- 1051559
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/ER/15841-20
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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