Groundwater flow speed measurement using an electrolyte antenna

Most hydrogeophysical methods focus on subsurface structure, water content, and other properties that can be used to infer flow properties, but only the combination of self-potential and resistivity has thus far been used to estimate water flux. Exploiting the inverse relationship between the length of a wire antenna and its electrical resonant frequency, an aqueous electrolyte solution can be injected into a borehole, and the rate at which the leading edge of the plume advances can be determined by measuring the time-rate-of-change of the plume's electrical resonant frequency using a commercial antenna analyzer. Experiments were conducted to calibrate the relationship between the electrical resonant frequency of the electrolyte plume and its physical length in water-saturated porous media. Length-versus-resonant-frequency calibration obtained from measurements on wires housed in buried conduits representing preferential flow paths through a model aquifer exhibit close agreement with theoretical predictions based on theory describing the behavior of wire antennas in air. The advantages of this method for subsurface characterization include that it is 1) deployable by one person, 2) not dependent on inversion methods, 3) effective in a single borehole, and 4) not scale dependent.