Modelling of the reactive transport of contaminants in the (un-)saturated zone for the prognosis of natural attenuation
Third Party Funds Group - Sub project
Start date : 01.04.2004
End date : 31.03.2007
Extension date: 31.12.2008
Overall project details
Overall project
Kontrollierter natürlicher Rückhalt und Abbau von Schadstoffen bei der Sanierung kontaminierter Böden und Grundwässer (BMBF Förderschwerpunkt KORA)
Project details
Scientific Abstract
Scientific Abstract
The evaluation of the potential of contaminated sites concerning natural attenuation needs comprehensive process descriptions and accurate, reliable numerical algorithms. Numerical errors may lead to qualitatively completely wrong conclusions concerning the potential of the site for degradation. It has been developed a comprehensive and flexible simulation tool, that is outstanding concerning the variety of processes, the quality and efficiency of the calculations ensured by modern numerical methods as well as the usability. The existing software platform RICHY has been extended, which is already intensely and successfully used by universities, institutes and consultants for the simulation of reactive transport and parameter identification. Among previous modules for coupled sufactant transport, preferential, unsaturated flow or carrier facilitated transport the project could realize new model components that surpass most of all existing software packages. The extensions contain complete descriptions of microbially catalysed degradation with arbitrary reaction partners and inhibition, general multicomponent reactions including the effects of ionic strength, as well as mineral dissolution and precipitation. The efficient and highly accurate, newly developed mathematical solution algorithms for the resulting coupled systems of partial differential equations could show their quality in complex international benchmark studies. Locally mass conserving, mixed hybrid finite element discretisations of the flow problem have been combined with globally implicit, reactive multicomponent models. Novel reduction methods for the latter rely on the linear transformation of the equation systems and variables and lead to the consideration of conservation quantities which can be handled efficiently, as a part of the transport – reaction – equations decouples. Another approach that has been pursued simultaneously relies on a modified Newton method and results in efficiency enhancements by the neglection of coupling terms in the Jacobian matrix. This algorithm can be applied fully adaptively, in 1D as well as in 2D. Both approaches could be combined with adaptive techniques for the automatic, efficient choice of time steps and spatial grid sizes, which makes the calculation of these complex problems feasible on PCs.
Involved:
Peter Knabner
Project Leader
Alexander Prechtel
Project Leader
Florian Frank
Project Member
Alexander Prechtel
Project Member
Serge Kräutle
Project Member
