Radial solute transport in highly heterogeneous aquifers: Modeling and experimental comparison

We analyze solute transport in a radially converging 3-D flow field in a porous medium with spatially heterogeneous hydraulic conductivity (K). The aim of the paper is to analyze the impact of heterogeneity and the mode of injection on BreakThrough Curves (BTCs) detected at a well pumping a contaminated aquifer. The aquifer is conceptualized as an ensemble of blocks of uniform but contrasting K and the analysis makes use of the travel time approach. Despite the approximations introduced, the model reproduces a laboratory experiment without calibration of transport parameters. Our results also show excellent agreement with numerical simulations for different levels of heterogeneity. We focus on the impact on the BTC of both heterogeneity in K and solute release conditions. It is shown that the injection mode matters, and the differences in the BTCs between uniform and flux-proportional injection increase with the heterogeneity of the K-field. Furthermore, we study the effect of heterogeneity and mode of injection on early and late arrivals at the well.