Transient Stochastic Analysis of Biodegradable Contaminant Transport: First-Order Decay

Abstract

A stochastic methodology was used to analyze the field-scale transport of solutes in heterogeneous aquifers with first-order biodegradation. Spectral methods and perturbation techniques were utilized to develop expressions for the field-scale effective parameters in the mean transport model. Expressions were obtained for the longitudinal and transverse macrodispersivity coefficients, and effective velocity and an effective decay parameter for statistically anisotropic, and isotropic, heterogeneous porous medium, respectively. The behavior of these parameters was described as function of time and log K correlation scale. The expressions for asymptotic values of the dispersivity coefficients and effective velocity and decay parameters were also derived for the isotropic case.