Unsaturated flow effects on solute transport in porous media

Luwen Zhuang; Amir Raoof; Mojtaba G. Mahmoodlu; Sara Biekart; Riemer de Witte; Lubna Badi; Martinus Th van Genuchten; Kairong Lin

doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2021.126301

Unsaturated flow effects on solute transport in porous media

Luwen Zhuang^*, Amir Raoof, Mojtaba G. Mahmoodlu, Sara Biekart, Riemer de Witte, Lubna Badi, Martinus Th van Genuchten, Kairong Lin

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

A major contaminant transport process in soils is hydrodynamic dispersion by affecting the spreading and arrival of surface-applied pollutants at underlying groundwater reservoirs. When a soil is unsaturated, hydrodynamic dispersion is very much affected by soil water saturation. Centimeter- and decimeter-scale column experiments were carried out to explore the effects of fluid saturation and particle size on the unsaturated solute dispersivity. Measured in-situ breakthrough curves were analyzed in terms of both classical advection–dispersion and dual-porosity (mobile-immobile) type transport equations. A clear non-monotonic relationship was found between the dispersivity and soil water saturation. The extent of non-monotonicity was more pronounced for a relatively coarse-textured sand compared to a finer sand. This finding has been reported rarely before; it explains some of the inconsistencies of saturation-dispersivity relationships in the literature.

Original language	English
Article number	126301
Pages (from-to)	1-9
Journal	Journal of Hydrology
Volume	598
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2021.126301
Publication status	Published - Jul 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors acknowledge financial support by the Veni Talent Scheme Award (No. 016.151.047), which is (partly) financed by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51822908 and 42007165 ). The authors would like to thank the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for providing helpful comments to the manuscript.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier B.V.

Funding

The authors acknowledge financial support by the Veni Talent Scheme Award (No. 016.151.047), which is (partly) financed by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51822908 and 42007165 ). The authors would like to thank the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for providing helpful comments to the manuscript.

Keywords

Dispersion
Dispersivity
Solute transport
Unsaturated zone

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10.1016/j.jhydrol.2021.126301

1-s2.0-S0022169421003486-mainFinal published version, 3.2 MBLicence: Taverne

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title = "Unsaturated flow effects on solute transport in porous media",

abstract = "A major contaminant transport process in soils is hydrodynamic dispersion by affecting the spreading and arrival of surface-applied pollutants at underlying groundwater reservoirs. When a soil is unsaturated, hydrodynamic dispersion is very much affected by soil water saturation. Centimeter- and decimeter-scale column experiments were carried out to explore the effects of fluid saturation and particle size on the unsaturated solute dispersivity. Measured in-situ breakthrough curves were analyzed in terms of both classical advection–dispersion and dual-porosity (mobile-immobile) type transport equations. A clear non-monotonic relationship was found between the dispersivity and soil water saturation. The extent of non-monotonicity was more pronounced for a relatively coarse-textured sand compared to a finer sand. This finding has been reported rarely before; it explains some of the inconsistencies of saturation-dispersivity relationships in the literature.",

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author = "Luwen Zhuang and Amir Raoof and Mahmoodlu, {Mojtaba G.} and Sara Biekart and {de Witte}, Riemer and Lubna Badi and {van Genuchten}, {Martinus Th} and Kairong Lin",

note = "Funding Information: The authors acknowledge financial support by the Veni Talent Scheme Award (No. 016.151.047), which is (partly) financed by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51822908 and 42007165 ). The authors would like to thank the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for providing helpful comments to the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021 Elsevier B.V.",

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doi = "10.1016/j.jhydrol.2021.126301",

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AU - Zhuang, Luwen

AU - Raoof, Amir

AU - Mahmoodlu, Mojtaba G.

AU - Biekart, Sara

AU - de Witte, Riemer

AU - Badi, Lubna

AU - van Genuchten, Martinus Th

AU - Lin, Kairong

N1 - Funding Information: The authors acknowledge financial support by the Veni Talent Scheme Award (No. 016.151.047), which is (partly) financed by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51822908 and 42007165 ). The authors would like to thank the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for providing helpful comments to the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Elsevier B.V.

PY - 2021/7

Y1 - 2021/7

N2 - A major contaminant transport process in soils is hydrodynamic dispersion by affecting the spreading and arrival of surface-applied pollutants at underlying groundwater reservoirs. When a soil is unsaturated, hydrodynamic dispersion is very much affected by soil water saturation. Centimeter- and decimeter-scale column experiments were carried out to explore the effects of fluid saturation and particle size on the unsaturated solute dispersivity. Measured in-situ breakthrough curves were analyzed in terms of both classical advection–dispersion and dual-porosity (mobile-immobile) type transport equations. A clear non-monotonic relationship was found between the dispersivity and soil water saturation. The extent of non-monotonicity was more pronounced for a relatively coarse-textured sand compared to a finer sand. This finding has been reported rarely before; it explains some of the inconsistencies of saturation-dispersivity relationships in the literature.

AB - A major contaminant transport process in soils is hydrodynamic dispersion by affecting the spreading and arrival of surface-applied pollutants at underlying groundwater reservoirs. When a soil is unsaturated, hydrodynamic dispersion is very much affected by soil water saturation. Centimeter- and decimeter-scale column experiments were carried out to explore the effects of fluid saturation and particle size on the unsaturated solute dispersivity. Measured in-situ breakthrough curves were analyzed in terms of both classical advection–dispersion and dual-porosity (mobile-immobile) type transport equations. A clear non-monotonic relationship was found between the dispersivity and soil water saturation. The extent of non-monotonicity was more pronounced for a relatively coarse-textured sand compared to a finer sand. This finding has been reported rarely before; it explains some of the inconsistencies of saturation-dispersivity relationships in the literature.

KW - Dispersion

KW - Dispersivity

KW - Solute transport

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ER -

Unsaturated flow effects on solute transport in porous media

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Keywords

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