Abstract
An understanding of natural degradation of multiple reactive contaminants in the aquifers is essential before designing the monitoring or remediation programs for polluted aquifers. Since such reactive contaminants are ubiquitous, a number of research works has been performed in the past three decades for the modelling of multi-species reactive transport (MSRT) phenomenon. The widely used finite difference method (FDM) and finite element method (FEM)–based models suffer a drawback of relying on a grid/mesh, which makes the solution unstable. Addressing such difficulties, the latest research on the MSRT models is directed towards the meshless methods. In this study, the meshless local Petrov Galerkin (MLPG) method–based multi-species reactive transport model (MLPG-MSRT) is presented, with an objective to create a robust simulation tool for the prediction of fate of multiple contaminants of the first-order reaction network. The developed model is validated for reversible as well as irreversible reaction networks with the available analytical solutions. Also, the MLPG model for unconfined aquifer flow (UF) is developed, validated, and coupled with the MLPG-MSRT model. The MLPG-UF-MSRT model results are further compared with the established FDM-based MODFLOW-RT3D model solutions for a rectangular and a real field type study. The results showed that the proposed model can simulate MSRT as accurately as the FDM-based models with an additional advantage of simplicity and stability, and thus, is more efficient for complex field problems.
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The authors are thankful to editors and reviewers for the constructive comments which improved the manuscript significantly.
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The first author got funding from the Ministry of Education, Government of India, the Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship (PMRF) through PMRF ID: 1300144.
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All the authors contributed this research. The first draft of the manuscript is written by Sanjukta Das, and T. I. Eldho reviewed and improved the quality of the manuscript. The final manuscript is approved by all the authors.
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Highlights
• A meshless local Petrov Galerkin (MLPG) simulation model for the first-order reaction networks in groundwater is proposed.
• The developed model is successfully validated with analytical solutions and later applied to two case studies.
• Results obtained are stable and similar to established solutions even if a lesser number of nodes are used.
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Das, S., Eldho, T.I. A coupled flow and transport model for simulation of multi-species reactive transport in unconfined aquifer using meshless local Petrov Galerkin (MLPG) method. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 105556–105574 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-29664-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-29664-6