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Aquifer Remediation Design for Nonequilibrium Transport

Most studies reviewed to this point focus on the important problem of aquifer remediation design. In each of these studies, contaminant transport is modeled for a single contaminant subject to either conservative or linear equilibrium transport. This is an important limitation because groundwater contamination often involves multiple contaminants subject to nonequilibrium, or rate-limited, transport. The first to study the impact of rate-limited mass transfer on groundwater remediation design were Haggerty and Gorelick [1994]. Using a hypothetical aquifer system, they study the simultaneous remediation of three contaminants with different sorption affinities. Their management model combines two-dimensional, linear nonequilibrium solute transport simulation with deterministic, nonlinear optimization to identify optimal well locations and pumping rates for simultaneous cleanup of the three contaminant plumes. A few key results of this study are worth summarizing here: (1) Although strongly sorbing contaminants are difficult to remove, weakly sorbing contaminants are more extensive and faster moving, and both play an important role in defining the optimal design; (2) There is a lower bound on cleanup time that is defined by the mass transfer rate coefficient; and (3) The impact on remediation of rate-limited mass transfer lessens as the time-frame for cleanup increases. Another work of interest is that of Harvey et al. [1994] who present a comparison of pulsed and continuous pumping for removing contaminants subject to rate-limited mass transfer.



U.S. National Report to IUGG, 1991-1994
Rev. Geophys. Vol. 33 Suppl., © 1995 American Geophysical Union