EAGER: Contaminant Transport Behavior in and at the Interface of Fine-Grained Sediments; Visualization, Simulation and Analysis

1523488品德标题：EIGER：细粒沉积物中和交界处的污染物传输行为；可视化、模拟和分析美国环保署估计，全美有235,000到355,000个受污染的地下水站点需要修复。每个正在进行补救的地点每年的运营和维护费用估计在610 000美元至770 000美元之间。众所周知，污染物在细粒沉积物中的行为不同，并可能导致用作饮用水来源的地下水长期受到污染。然而，尽管人们对此高度关注，但人们对这些细粒地层中污染物的行为知之甚少。因此，彻底了解造成细粒地层中污染物行为的基本物理化学机制是至关重要的。由此产生的分析将阐明在受污染的地下水场地观察到的长期尾矿现象的机制。这种污染尾矿对工业的财务影响，不仅是因为直接成本，还因为他们需要储备资金，以确保对现场修复的长期财政支持。公众、政府和行业都在寻求加快地下水污染的清理，这项研究旨在帮助满足这一需求。最后，这项提议直接寻求增加工程领域的女性人数。工程研究所是佛蒙特州州长学院的四个STEM部门之一。本提案中提出的解决关键环境需求的实验调查、建模和分析相结合，将产生以下预期结果；1)利用一种新的磁共振成像技术，将定性和定量地揭示被尖锐界面分隔的细粒和粗粒介质中溶解溶质的运移行为；2)通过实验结果和运移模型的融合，评估当前理论捕捉该系统中运移行为的准确性；3)结合模型对实验结果进行分析，以揭示影响污染尾流现象的因素，这对于经济有效的地下水修复至关重要。这些革命性的成果将通过以下方式实现：1)利用新的MRI技术来揭示示踪剂在多孔介质中的传输行为，2)使用数学建模来模拟在MRI实验中观察到的行为，以及3)结合实验和数学建模结果来分析示踪剂在细颗粒介质中的运动对通过尖锐界面与粗粒度主体隔开的影响。

1523488PinderTitle: EAGER: Contaminant Transport Behavior in and at the Interface of Fine-Grained Sediments; Visualization, Simulation and AnalysisEPA estimates that there are 235,000 to 355,000 contaminated groundwater sites across the United States that require remediation. The annual operation and maintenance costs, per site undergoing remediation, are estimated to range from $610,000 to $770,000. It is well known that contaminants behave differently in fine grained sediments and may lead to long term contamination of groundwater used as a source of drinking water. However, in spite of this high level of concern there is very little known about the behavior of contaminants that reside in these fine grained formations. It is therefore critical that the fundamental physical-chemical mechanisms responsible for contaminant behavior in fine-grained formations be thoroughly understood. The resulting analysis will elucidate the mechanisms that govern the long-term tailing phenomena observed in contaminated groundwater sites. Such contaminant tailing impacts industry financially, not only because of the direct costs, but also because of their requirement to hold money in reserve to assure long-term financial support for site remediation. The general public, government and industry seek to accelerate groundwater contamination cleanup and this research is designed to help satisfy this need. Finally, this proposal seeks directly to increase the number of women in engineering. The vehicle is the Engineering Institute that is one of four STEM components of the Governor's Institutes of Vermont.The combination of experimental investigation, modeling and analysis proposed in this proposal to address a critical environmental need will yield the following expected outcomes; 1) the transport behavior of dissolved solutes in media characterized by fine and coarse grained materials separated by a sharp interface will be revealed both qualitatively and quantitatively as a function of time using a novel MRI technology, 2) the veracity of current theory to capture the transport behavior in this system will be evaluated through the fusion of experimental results and transport modeling, and, 3) the experimental results in combination with the modeling will be analyzed to uncover the factors impacting the contaminant-tailing phenomenon which is critical to cost-effective groundwater remediation. The transformative outcomes will be achieved by; 1) employing novel MRI technology to reveal the behavior of tracer transport in porous media, 2) employing mathematical modeling to simulate the behavior observed in the MRI experiments, and, 3) combining experimental and mathematical modeling results to analyze the impact of the movement of tracers in fine-grained media separated from a coarse-grained host by a sharp interface.