Modeling tracer transport in randomly heterogeneous porous media by nonlocal moment equations: Anomalous transport
Abstract
Modeling tracer transport in geologic porous media suffers from the corrupt characterization of the spatial distribution of hydrogeologic properties of the system and the incomplete knowledge of processes governing transport at multiple scales. Representations of transport dynamics based on a Fickian model of the kind considered in the advection-dispersion equation (ADE) fail to capture (a) the temporal variation associated with the rate of spreading of a tracer, and (b) the distribution of early and late arrival times which are often observed in field and/or laboratory scenarios and are considered as the signature of anomalous transport. Elsewhere we have presented exact stochastic moment equations to model tracer transport in randomly heterogeneous aquifers. We have also developed a closure scheme which enables one to provide numerical solutions of such moment equations at different orders of approximations. The resulting (ensemble) average and variance of concentration fields were found to display a good agreement against Monte Carlo - based simulation results for mildly heterogeneous (or well-conditioned strongly heterogeneous) media. Here we explore the ability of the moment equations approach to describe the distribution of early arrival times and late time tailing effects which can be observed in Monte-Carlo based breakthrough curves (BTCs) of the (ensemble) mean concentration. We show that BTCs of mean resident concentration calculated at a fixed space location through higher-order approximations of moment equations display long tailing features of the kind which is typically associated with anomalous transport behavior and are not represented by an ADE model with constant dispersive parameter, such as the zero-order approximation.
- Publication:
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AGU Spring Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- May 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUSMIN23A..02M
- Keywords:
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- 1869 HYDROLOGY / Stochastic hydrology;
- 0545 COMPUTATIONAL GEOPHYSICS / Modeling;
- 1832 HYDROLOGY / Groundwater transport;
- 0560 COMPUTATIONAL GEOPHYSICS / Numerical solutions