NUMERICAL MODELLING OF CONTAMINANT TRANSPORT THROUGH LAYERED SOIL

Abstract

Contaminant transport in porous media is very interesting and motivated by concern over the presence of a wide variety of chemical and substances and waste in the subsurface environment. In this study, Solute transport through saturated multilayer soils was studied using laboratory experiments and implicit finite difference numerical technique of the solute transport equation for chloride and fluoride. Soil water and physical characteristics as well as solute sorption properties were measured and calculated for each soil layer. Linear adsorption processes were used to predict adsorption in each layer. Water flux was assumed constant for water-saturated layered soil profiles. For all adsorption processes considered, and results showed that the order in which the soil layers were stratified in a water-saturated profile did not influence the effluent solute concentration distribution.