HR: 12:05h
AN: H32D-08    [Abstracts]
TI: Upscaling Reactive Transport in Porous Media: Laboratory Visualizations and Stochastic Models
AU: * Oates, P
EM: pproof@aol.com
AF: QEA LLC, 305 West Grand Ave Suite 300, Montvale, NJ 07645, United States
AU: * Oates, P
EM: pproof@aol.com
AF: M.I.T., 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
AU: Harvey, C F
EM: charvey@mit.edu
AF: M.I.T., 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
AB: We present a field-scale model of reactive transport that describes the segregation and mixing of reactants at the small-scale by their joint distribution, thereby avoiding the nearly impossible task of explicitly resolving centimeter- scale patterns of reactant concentrations in field-scale models. We tested this model by collecting detailed quantitative images of colorimetric reactions during transport through translucent porous media. These novel experimental results reveal that: (1) The distributions of local solute concentrations are accurately parameterized by beta distributions; (2) The evolution of these distributions is predicted by coupling transport equations for the variance and covariance of local reactant concentrations with conventional transport and chemical reaction equations; and (3) The rate of concentration variance destruction, that drives chemical reaction, quickly equilibrates with the rate of variance production. We demonstrate this reactive-transport model for both our experimental results and through numerical simulation of double-Monod kinetic oxidation of hydrocarbons subject to linear adsorption.
UR: http://web.mit.edu/harvey-lab/Reactive%20Transport.html
DE: 0418 Bioremediation
DE: 1832 Groundwater transport
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting