The Influence of Colloids on Water Flow and Solute Transport in Soils: Side Effect or Key Process?
Third party funded individual grant
Start date : 01.11.2006
End date : 31.12.2009
Project details
Scientific Abstract
Soil colloids may influence the interaction between solutes and the immobile solid phase. A coupling to the fluid transport is possible by processes of sedimentation, flocculation, precipitation, filtration and deposition. The objective of this research project is the qualitative and quantitative examination of the crucial aspects of colloidal-influenced solute- and fluid transport by means of systematic, prognostic simulation. In detail,
- the attachment and detachment of colloids under consideration air-water interface of the soil,
- the transformation of the pore space and the thus induced coupling to the fluid transport in soil, and
- the transformation of the surface properties of the solid phase and the thus induced coupling to the solute transport
have to be analyzed. The main hypothesis of this project states that the couplings incorporated in the model conception affect the praxis-relevant situations not only qualitatively, but also quantitatively in a significant way. The deterministic description of the physicochemical mechanisms on basis of the conservation laws for mass, impulse and energy results in systems of time-dependent non-linear partial differential equations. In order to make the model operative with respect to the problem formulation, one has to approximate it via numerical methods and to implement those in a software tool. For each level of complexity which has to be achieved, a comparison with existing experimental data has to be accomplished. In particular, these datasets have is to be used to obtain a realistic parametrization of the model via inverse modelling.
