Direct ground water flow direction and velocity measurements using the colloidal borescope
- Weiss Associates, Emeryville, CA (United States)
- Oak Ridge National Lab., Grand Junction, CO (United States); and others
The colloidal borescope is an in situ instrument capable of directly observing suspended colloidal size particles (1 to 10 {mu}m) and determining ground water flow direction and velocity in an open borehole or monitor well in real time. In addition, the borescope can be used to investigate colloid mobilization during well sampling and the influence of pumping, tides, and subsurface drains. The fixed-focus colloidal borescope was developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory-Grand Junction (ORNL-GJ) in Colorado, and has been used to characterize ground water flow at several DOE facilities including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Kansas City, Fernald, Savannah River, Hanford, Portsmouth, and Paducah. The borescope consists of a video camera, compass, optical 14OX magnification lens, and illumination source, all encased in a stainless steel, waterproof housing. The colloidal borescope is lowered to the desired depth in the well and video images of colloids are tracked by a Video Image Analysis System (VIAS) which uses a PC computer with a video frame-grabber board to digitize up to 256 colloids every 4 seconds. The VIAS analyses the digitized video images and calculates the number, size, flow direction, and flow rate of the colloids. These data are recorded on the PC hard drive and plotted. Two borescopes have been used at the LLNL facilities: the original fixed-focus borescope instrument with software designed by the ORNL-GJ, and the remote-focus, variable-illumination borescope with particle image processing LabView software designed by LLNL. Both instruments function similarly, however, the remote-focus borescope provides a 500-mm focal range, variable illumination for better particle tracking, a flux-gate compass, an alpha-numeric image encoder, and LabView processing software that provides several real-time image processing options and digital sampling frequencies. A typical borescope log is shown.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 102377
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-JC-118910; CONF-950868-13; ON: DE95017287; TRN: 95:006789
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ER `95: environmental remediation conference: committed to results, Denver, CO (United States), 13-18 Aug 1995; Other Information: PBD: Jul 1995
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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