EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL STUDY OF SOLUTE TRANSPORT IN LAYERED SOIL

Abstract

Contaminant transport in porous media is very interesting and motivated by concerns over the presence of a wide variety of chemical substances and wastes in the subsurface environment. The transport of contaminants play a dominant role in layered soil and attenuation processes occur while contaminants travel through the subsurface porous media. In this study, solute transport through saturated single and multilayered soils is studied using laboratory experiments and implicit finite difference approximations of the solute transport equation (for chloride and chromium). Soil water and physical characteristics as well as solute sorption properties are measured and/or calculated for each soil layer. Linear adsorption processes are used to predict adsorption in each layer. Water flux was assumed constant for water-saturated layered soil profiles.