HR: 0800h
AN: H11D-1294    [Abstracts]
TI: Efficient Numerical Methods for Modeling NAPL Dissolution Fingering
AU: * Farthing, M W
EM: matthew_farthing@unc.edu
AF: Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, 104 Rosenau Hall University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599 United States
AU: Seyedabbasi, M
EM: ahmad@ce.udel.edu
AF: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 301 Dupont Hall University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716 United States
AU: Imhoff, P T
EM: imhoff@ce.udel.edu
AF: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 301 Dupont Hall University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716 United States
AU: Miller, C T
EM: casey_miller@unc.edu
AF: Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, 104 Rosenau Hall University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599 United States
AB: The dissolution of nonaqueous phase liquids (NAPLs) at residual saturation can result in the development of preferential dissolution pathways, or dissolution fingers. Previous research has shown that flow bypassing associated with dissolution fingers can have a dramatic impact on NAPL removal and lead to significantly lower rates of mass transfer than those predicted by standard models. As is often the case with multiphase subsurface phenomena, accurate and efficient numerical simulation of dissolution fingering poses several challenges. Resolution of sub-centimeter scale processes is necessary to capture finger development, but the physical domains of interest for NAPL contamination can be orders of magnitude larger. Developing an effective computational tool for modeling such problems requires a combination of modern, adaptive high-resolution numerical methods and efficient techniques for coupling flow and transport processes. Here, we consider a number of numerical methods for modeling flow and transport processes involved in NAPL dissolution fingering, including spatial discretizations, temporal discretizations, and coupling techniques, with the goal of determining effective approaches for simulating large-scale domains for long time periods on distributed-computing platforms. To evaluate the considered approaches, we compare their performance for benchmark problems as well as through comparison to data from laboratory experiments.
DE: 1829 Groundwater hydrology
DE: 1832 Groundwater transport
DE: 1849 Numerical approximations and analysis
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005