This presentation provides an overview of a major field focused program of studies aimed at improved investigation methods and understanding organic contaminant source zones and plumes in fractured porous sedimentary rock. This research began in 1997, when intensive field studies were initiated at a TCE contaminated site on steeply dipping and faulted sandstone in California. Now, with collabor...

Several studies have been conducted on behalf of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to identify detection monitoring parameters for specific industries. One outcome of these studies was the evolution of an empirical multi-variant contaminant fingerprinting process. This process, Fingerprint Analysis of Leachate Contaminants (FALCON), was developed through the EPA’s Technical Support...

Simulations with a dual permeability model show that a few discrete fractures can have a Ž . major influence on plume geometry. A limited number of truncated fractures 1–4 within a permeable matrix can create nearly circular plumes, with about the same degree of spreading in the direction transverse to the average hydraulic gradient as in the longitudinal direction. By comparison, continuous fr...

The objective of this work is to present a numerical study of contaminant migration in saturated porous media. For this purpose, the advection-difussion equation describing the evolution of contaminant plumes in a vertical cross section of an aquifer is discretized employing a Total Variation Diminishing method (TVD), which provides an efficient way to eliminate spurious numerical oscillations ...

Phenolic contaminants can become irreversibly bound to organic matrices in soils and sediments. The bound chemicals have been shown to possess attenuated environmental mobilities and reduced bioavailabilities. The purpose of this ongoing study is to a) evaluate the factors affecting binding of phenols to natural soils, sediments and aquifer material, and b) utilize this information to develop i...

Spatial oscillations in soil contaminant concentration profiles are sometimes observed, but rarely commented on, or are attributed to noisy data. In this paper we consider a possible mechanism for the occurrence of oscillatory reactant profiles within contaminant plumes. The bioremediative reactions which occur are effected by bacteria, whose rôle is normally conceived of as being passive. Here...

[1] The goal of groundwater contaminant plume interpolation is to provide an accurate representation of the spatial distribution of the plume given the data limitations associated with sparse monitoring networks with irregular geometries. Currently available methods for plume estimation cannot fully take advantage of prior knowledge of flow and transport information or the location of a contami...

Reactions involving iron play a major role in the environmental cycling of a wide range of important organic, inorganic and radioactive contaminants. Consequently, a range of environmental clean-up technologies have been proposed or developed which utilise iron chemistry to remediate contaminated land and surface and subsurface waters, e.g. the use of injected zero zero-valent iron nanoparticle...