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Office of Scientific and Technical Information
 

Effect of the geochemical environment on heavy-metal transport in ground water

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:5150449
; ; ; ;
An overview is presented of a field-based research program that is examining the significance of chemical reactions in heavy-metal transport in ground water. Both natural-gradient tracer tests and laboratory experiments with subsurface materials are being used to evaluate the relative importance of hydrologic and geochemical processes affecting metal transport. The experiments are being conducted in an uncontaminated recharge zone and in sewage-contaminated zones of the sand and gravel aquifer at the Cape Cod Toxic-Substance Hydrology Research Site. The results of tracer tests with zinc, chromium, and selenium showed that various chemical processes can have a dominant effect on metal transport; these processes include oxidation-reduction, adsorption-desorption, and aqueous complexation reactions. In some cases, significant speciation changes occurred as the injected tracers moved downgradient, and the changes generally had marked effects on the reactivity of the tracers with the porous medium. The experiments revealed that equilibrium geochemical models will be difficult to apply in modeling the transport of some redox-sensitive contaminants, such as chromium (VI) and selenium (VI), because of the specific nature of interactions of each element with reductants. A practical modeling approach for describing metal transport in ground water may require laboratory experiments designed specifically to identify and minimize the number of chemical reactions considered in a hydrogeochemical transport model.
Research Organization:
Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA (United States). Water Resources Div.
OSTI ID:
5150449
Report Number(s):
PB-92-179134/XAB; USGS/WRI--91-4034; CNN: EPA-DW14934639
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
540220* -- Environment
Terrestrial-- Chemicals Monitoring & Transport-- (1990-)
AQUIFERS
BENCH-SCALE EXPERIMENTS
CHEMICAL REACTIONS
CHEMISTRY
CHROMIUM
CONTAMINATION
ELEMENTS
ENVIRONMENTAL TRANSPORT
FIELD TESTS
GEOCHEMISTRY
GEOLOGY
GROUND WATER
HYDROGEN COMPOUNDS
HYDROLOGY
MASS TRANSFER
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
METALS
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
POLLUTION
REDOX REACTIONS
SELENIUM
SEMIMETALS
TESTING
TRANSITION ELEMENTS
WATER
WATER CHEMISTRY
WATER POLLUTION
ZINC