A Contaminant Transport in Partially Saturated Porous Media

Abstract

We model the flow of the contaminated water through the porous media sample. We model the inflow of water, flux of water in the sample, flux of the contaminant in the water in the sample, adsorption of the contaminant in the sample and the outflow of the contaminated water from the sample. During the process, there appears fully saturated zone, partially saturated zone and dry zone. We consider Darcys law for flux of the water in fully saturated zone and Richards equation for flux in the partially saturated zone. Flux of the contaminant is governed by Ficks law and the adsorption of contaminant is modeled using Freundlich isotherm. Problem is solved in 1D using numerical solution based on the MOL method. Since flow of the water is independent of the contaminant, we compute separately saturation in the whole time interval and then contamination of water and adsorption of contaminant in the sample.