Laboratory investigation of dispersivity variations of contaminants in saturated homogeneous and heterogeneous porous media

An Accurate estimation of contaminant transport parameters is one of the most important steps for simulation of contaminant transport in porous media. In this work, the mean pore water velocity and the dispersion coefficient in three kinds of saturated porous media were estimated and their dispersivity variations with scale were investigated. The values of the mean pore water velocity and the dispersion coefficient were obtained by fitting the analytical solution of advection-dispersion equation to experimental breakthrough curves by using software CXTFIT2.1. The required data were collected by conducting tracer tests on a sand tank of internal dimensions 250 ×10 ×60 cm3. The tests were conducted in three kinds of porous media (homogeneous sandy soil, randomly heterogeneous sandy soil and natural heterogeneous sandy soil) under three hydraulic gradients 0.017, 0.025 and 0.034. The results showed that the dispersivities of each three porous media at each three hydraulic gradients increased with scale. Also, it was observed that with increasing the heterogeneity degree, the dispersivity variations with scale increased. Under hydraulic gradient 0.017, the dispersivity of the homogenous porous medium increased as a nonlinear function and in two other hydraulic gradients, its variations followed the linear functions. In the studied heterogeneous porous media, under hydraulic gradient 0.017, the dispersivity variations were erratic. However, in two other hydraulic gradients, its variations were as a power function or an exponential function. Therefore, in general, in a homogeneous aquifer and under high hydraulic gradients and in a heterogeneous aquifer, one can approximate the variations of the dispersivity using a linear function and a power function or an exponential function, respectively.