Tracer Gas Model Development and Verification in PFLOTRAN
- Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Albuquerque, NM, and Livermore, CA (United States)
Tracer gases, whether they are chemical or isotopic in nature, are useful tools in examining the flow and transport of gaseous or volatile species in the underground. One application is using detection of short-lived argon and xenon radionuclides to monitor for underground nuclear explosions. However, even chemically inert species, such as the noble gases, have bene observed to exhibit non-conservative behavior when flowing through porous media containing certain materials, such as zeolites, due to gas adsorption processes. This report details the model developed, implemented, and tested in the open source and massively parallel subsurface flow and transport simulator PFLOTRAN for future use in modeling the transport of adsorbing tracer gases.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation
- DOE Contract Number:
- NA0003525
- OSTI ID:
- 1889337
- Report Number(s):
- SAND2022-12877; 710200
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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