Innovative mathematical modeling in environmental remediation

    Authors

    G. T. Yeh; J. P. Gwo; M. D. Siegel; M. H. Li; Y. L. Fang; F. Zhang; W. S. Luo;S. B. Yabusaki

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    J. Environ. Radioact.

    Keywords

    Modeling; Reactive transport; Radioactive contamination; Land; remediation; REACTIVE TRANSPORT; SUBSURFACE MEDIA; GROUNDWATER; URANIUM; COMPONENTS; ADSORPTION; PARADIGM; SULFATE; SOIL; Environmental Sciences

    Abstract

    There are two different ways to model reactive transport: ad hoc and innovative reaction-based approaches. The former, such as the Kd simplification of adsorption, has been widely employed by practitioners, while the latter has been mainly used in scientific communities for elucidating mechanisms of biogeochemical transport processes. It is believed that innovative mechanistic-based models could serve as protocols for environmental remediation as well. This paper reviews the development of a mechanistically coupled fluid flow, thermal transport, hydrologic transport, and reactive biogeochemical model and example-applications to environmental remediation problems. Theoretical bases are sufficiently described. Four example problems previously carried out are used to demonstrate how numerical experimentation can be used to evaluate the feasibility of different remediation approaches. The first one involved the application of a 56-species uranium tailing problem to the Melton Branch Subwatershed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) using the parallel version of the model. Simulations were made to demonstrate the potential mobilization of uranium and other chelating agents in the proposed waste disposal site. The second problem simulated laboratory-scale system to investigate the role of natural attenuation in potential off-site migration of uranium from uranium mill tailings after restoration. It showed inadequacy of using a single Kd even for a homogeneous medium. The third example simulated laboratory experiments involving extremely high concentrations of uranium, technetium, aluminum, nitrate, and toxic metals (e.g., Ni, Cr, Co). The fourth example modeled microbially-mediated immobilization of uranium in an unconfined aquifer using acetate amendment in a field-scale experiment. The purposes of these modeling studies were to simulate various mechanisms of mobilization and immobilization of radioactive wastes and to illustrate how to apply reactive transport models for environmental remediation. (c) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

    Journal Title

    Journal of Environmental Radioactivity

    Volume

    119

    Publication Date

    1-1-2013

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    26

    Last Page

    38

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000317163000005

    ISSN

    0265-931X

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