A new multi-species pore-scale reactive transport modeling of arsenic sorption in dissolving porous media using lattice Boltzmann method

Physical and chemical heterogeneities associated with biogeochemical processes influence the fate and transport of contaminants in subsurface environments. We develop a new multi-species pore-scale reactive transport model based on the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) to examine the temporal and spatial evolution of chemical species during the sorption of Arsenic. This model couples a fluid flow solver to an optimal advection-diffusion transport model where transport and reactions between chemical species are solved iteratively yielding a better stability and accuracy over a wide range of peclet numbers. It has already been applied to study 1) the permeability change of a porous medium during dissolution and precipitation and 2) the effect of spatial and chemical heterogeneities on the uptake of arsenic from the aqueous solution. By combining these two scenarios, we extend the model to incorporate arsenic speciation (i.e. As(III) and As(V)) and solid iron phase transformation, explore the distribution of iron, arsenic and partitioning of arsenic on various iron bearing solid phases. We investigate how the multitude of pore-domains affects the formation of redox gradients. As(III) and magnetite concentrations increase toward the anoxic zones while ferrihydrite and As(V) remains the dominant species in oxic conditions. The proposed reaction network includes: biotic reduction of ferrihydrite and magnetite to Fe2+(aq), of ferrihydrite to magnetite, biologically-mediated organic matter oxidation coupled with reduction of O2(aq) and As(V) , abiotic oxidation of Fe(II) by O2(aq) and sorption of As(V) and As(III) on Fe (hydr)oxide(s). All of these reactions are treated as kinetically controlled except As(V) and As(III) adsorption/desorption reactions which are expressed by equilibrium mass action laws. Similar set of reactions has been applied to simulate the distribution of As within constructed soil aggregates using continuum-scale model MIN3P (Masue-Slowey et al., 2010). Their experimental and numerical results are used as a benchmark to identify the similar patterns obtained by the proposed model. The new model offers more quantitative understanding of pore-scale heterogeneity effects on macroscopic processes and corrections into continuum reactive transport models. Masue-Slowey, Y., Kocar, B.D., Jofre, S.A.B., Mayer, U.K., Pallud, C., Fendorf, S., 2010. Fate and transport of arsenic from constructed soil aggregates. Geochimica Et Cosmochimica Acta 74, A677-A677.