Abstract
The relationship between the scale-dependent dispersivity and heterogeneous sedimentary structures is investigated through conducting non-reactive tracer experiments in a three-dimensional heterogeneous sand tank. The heterogeneous porous media consists of three sedimentary facies of silty, fine, and medium sands collected from the west of the Songnen Plain, China. Moreover, several corresponding individual facies soil columns were constructed for comparison. A conservative tracer was continuously injected from an upstream source. The effective parameters were estimated by inverse modeling of a one-dimensional transport model. The results show that the scale dependence of the estimated dispersivities was discovered in the individual facies column (with relatively weaker effect) and the heterogeneous porous media (with more significant effect). With increasing transport distances, the dispersivities of the individual facies tend to reach an asymptotic value, while those of the heterogeneous media increase continuously. Furthermore, the results show that a power function can describe the relationship between effective dispersivities and transport distances. The exponent of the function is greater than one for the heterogeneous media, but less than one for the individual facies. The results also indicate that the dispersion plume is macroscopically dominated by the distribution of facies. The heterogeneity of hydraulic conductivity causes the variations of flow velocity, which further enhances the scale dependence of dispersivities. The tracer experiment in heterogeneous media provides the fundamental insight into the understanding of contaminant transport processes.
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The data and material used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
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Funding
This work was jointly supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2018YFC1800900), the Program for Jilin University (JLU) Science and Technology Innovative Research Team (No. 2019TD-35), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41772253, 41972249, 51774136), the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province of China (D2017508099), and the Program of Education Department of Hebei Province (QN219320). Additional funding was provided by the Engineering Research Center of Geothermal Resources Development Technology and Equipment, Ministry of Education, China.
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Conceptualization: Shuning Dong, Zhenxue Dai
Methodology: Ziqi Ma, Zhenxue Dai, Shangxian Yin
Formal analysis and investigation: Ziqi Ma, Shangxian Yin, Lin Zhu
Writing—original draft preparation: Ziqi Ma
Writing, review, and editing: Zhenxue Dai, Wei Jia, Corey Wallace, Mohamad Reza Soltanian
Funding acquisition: Zhenxue Dai, Shangxian Yin
Supervision: Zhenxue Dai
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Appendix
Appendix
The facies distribution of each layer is shown in Fig. 12. The thickness of each layer is 3 cm. Here, the first layer represents the bottom layer of the porous media, and the twelfth layer represents the top layer.
The facies distribution of each layer in heterogeneous porous media
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Ma, Z., Dong, S., Yin, S. et al. Experimental investigations on scale-dependent dispersivity in three-dimensional heterogeneous porous media. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 23336–23348 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-12316-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-12316-4