An Idealized Ground-Water Flow and Chemical Transport Model (S-PATHS) |
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| Authors: | Phil L Oberlander R W Nelson |
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| Institution: | Geosciences Research and Engineering Department, Battelle-Northwest Laboratories, P.O. Box 999, Richland, Washington 99352. |
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| Abstract: | The number of studies on the actual and potential environmental consequences of contaminated ground water is growing. One means of studying these consequences is through an idealized flow and transport model, S-PATHS, which allows the hydrologist to determine the salient features of contaminant migration with a minimum of data. The transport of contaminants by ground water from many waste disposal sites can be geometrically idealized as flow between a line and a circle. The flow system adjacent to the disposal site can be represented as a contaminant line source, and a downgradient pumping well as a circular sink. To study waste disposal sites on a larger scale the model geometry is reversed and the disposal site is represented as a circular source, and a river or other convenient line of evaluation is represented as a line sink. This idealization allows S-PATHS to describe the flow and transport process directly by a single partial differential expression. S-PATHS considers transmissivity, effective porosity, sorption, source strength, source concentration, decay, potentiometric gradient, circle size, and distance to the line. Coding for the model is not lengthy and can be run on a large-capacity, hand-held calculator. |
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