Abstract

The fate of contaminant migration through the subsurface environment as well as their potential hazard to humans, animals, and aquatic life has become one of the major current concerns of the scientific community. Accordingly, various theoretical and experimental studies have been conducted on the saturated soil by many researchers. The literature review emphasizes that the problem of the unsaturated transport of contaminants through porous media has received little attention. Thus, the present work is carried out to contribute to the study of heavy metals migration within unsaturated clay soil through mathematical modeling of the mechanisms and parameters which influence the transport phenomenon. For successful modeling, it is imperative that parameters which affect the transport phenomenon be investigated and determined properly. Hence, the study was conducted through two principal parts. The first part is an experimental investigation to quantify the various soil-water (solution) interactions that have an effect on the flow and contaminant transport and to derive the constitutive relationships required in mathematical modeling. The second part develops a contaminant migration mathematical model which includes unsaturated flow, hydrodynamic dispersion, and physico-chemical reaction between the solid and the liquid phase, employing the theory of mass transport. The experimental investigation contains two main sets of laboratory tests: ( i ) some independent tests in order to isolate and better understand the individual processes, and ( ii ) some tests on experimental models of the real phenomena to verify the related parameters in a combined kinetic situation. The results of all experiments are followed by discussion, in order to better understand the phenomenon behavior, and to realize the relationships among the various processes. Based on the above mechanisms, the governing equations of the problem are derived to provide a quantitative account of the behavior of the phenomenon. Finally, a finite volume algorithm is developed, on the basis of the mathematical model, in order to solve the contaminant transport equations numerically. Using experimental results, the numerical model is then calibrated and verified. The developed computer code provides the ability to predict the contaminant migration for any depth and period of time. Based on this capability the concentration variations of the solution along the soil profile, especially for long time periods, are predicted and illustrated