An Novel Decison Supporting System for Remediation by Natural Attenuation of Chlorinated Solvent Contaminated Groundwater

Natural attenuation is the reduction in concentration and mass of the contaminant due to naturally occurring processes in the subsurface environment. The process is monitored for regulatory purposes to demonstrate continuing attenuation of the contaminant reaching the site-specific regulatory goals within reasonable time, hence, the use of the term monitored natural attenuation (MNA). MNA has been widely accepted as a suitable management option for chlorinated solvent contaminated groundwater. The public domain model, BIOCHLOR, provided by the Center for Subsurface Modeling Support (CSMoS) of USEPA is a most commonly used model that simulates aquifer remediation by natural attenuation of dissolved multi-species solvents at chlorinated solvent release site.In our on-going project, we have developed a novel multispecies analytical model that significantly improved the inherent limitations of the same retardation factors for all species in BIOCHLOR. However, the developed model is limited to the case of boundary sources and equilibrium sorption assumption. As a subsequent two-year project of our on-going study, this study targets to continue the development of an advanced analytical model for rapidly predicting the plume behavior of chlorinate-contaminated groundwater for aquifer system resulting from the multiple inner source subject to a kinetic sorption. In the first year, an analytical model for multispecies plume transport with multiple inner sources will be derived. In the second year, we will extend the developed analytical model for multispecies transport subject to a kinetic sorption. The results from this two-year project can be integrated to build an advanced decision supporting system for natural attenuation of dissolved solvents at chlorinated solvent release site.