Mathematical Sciences: Collaborative Research for Advanced Modeling and Numerical Simulation of Surfactant Enhanced Aquifer Remediation

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ABSTRACT DMS-9634325 The migration and fate of nonaqueous phase liquid (NAPL) organic contaminants in the subsurface has been the subject of intensive investigation in the past few years. It is now generally recognized that the prevalence of NAPLs at contaminated sites is a significant impediment to aquifer restoration. Based upon the perceived limitations of conventional pump-and-treat methods for aquifer remediation, considerable interest is currently focused on the development of alternative remediation strategies. One of these alternative strategies is surfactant enhanced aquifer remediation (SEAR). There are three outstanding problems related to the design of successful SEAR projects. First, relatively little attention has been focused on the mathematical modeling of fluid flow in SEAR. Secondly, because of the limited sampling over the spatial extent of an aquifer, fluid flow and transport models will necessarily have large uncertainty in the presence of heterogeneity. Thirdly, the very large computations involved in simulation of the SEAR process require algorithms that are both reliable and efficient. Because of the complexities involved in the SEAR process, the proposed research will bring together the expertise from several disciplines, namely geosciences research, petroleum engineering and applied mathematics. The investigators propose to develop models and numerical algorithms to simulate the initial dispersal of organic contaminants and later cleanup by means of' surfactant floods. These numerical algorithms will employ complex multi-phase flow models, state-of-the-art geostatistical methods and modem numerical techniques such as adaptive mesh refinement, dynamic upscaling of physical properties and object-oriented programming. The computations will be performed on workstations, and on supercomputers employing parallel processing. Graphical user interfaces and interactive visualization techniques will be developed.