Two-dimensional modeling of contaminant transport in porous media in the presence of colloids

It has long been known that colloids can facilitate the transport of contaminants in groundwater systems by reducing the effective retardation factor. A significant effort has been devoted to study colloid-facilitated contaminant transport during the past decade. Many of the previous studies were restricted to one-dimensional analyses and comparisons with finite-column experiments. In this work, a two-dimensional numerical model is developed and used to study the different interactions between colloids, contaminants, and porous media under homogeneous conditions. The numerical formulation of the model is based on discretizing mass balance equations and reaction equations using finite differences having a third-order, total variance-diminishing scheme for the advection terms. This scheme significantly reduces numerical dispersion and leads to greater accuracy compared to the standard central-differencing scheme. The model is tested against analytical solutions under simplified conditions as well as against experimental data, and the results are favorable. The model is used to investigate the impact of the various reaction rates and parameter values on the movement of contaminant plumes in two dimensions. The model is also used to investigate the hypothesis that colloids may increase the effective retardation factor of contaminant plumes. The analysis shows that assuming kinetic mass exchange between contaminant and colloids with constant reaction rate coefficients that are not related to the concentrations may lead to inaccurate results. These inaccurate results are exemplified in the finding that under the kinetic assumption the ratio of the initial concentration of colloids to the initial concentration of contaminant does not affect the amount of facilitation or retardation that occurs in the system. It is also found that colloids can increase the effective retardation factor for the contaminant under certain combinations of reaction rates and distribution coefficients. A quantitative empirical expression to identify whether colloids retard or facilitate the contaminant movement is presented.