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Copyright of Hydrogeology Journal is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Foam injection is widely used in petroleum industry for enhanced oil recovery, but has received limited attention for the application of environmental remediation at the field scale. This study analyses the use of foam as a blocking agent, i.e. to confine a source zone of contaminant in groundwater. Laboratory experiments in 1D porous media with a commercially available biodegradable surfactant performed on columns using pre-generated foam show that the foam reduces the relative water permeability krw by a factor of 100-1000. krw was measured right after foam placement by injecting only water (drainage test) and corresponding to the relative permeability of water in presence of foam. A comparison to a theoretical two-phase flow in porous medium shows that the Van Genuchten equation can be used to estimate the krw value. In the field, experiments done on two different porous media and using three different injection techniques (co-injection, surfactant alternating gas, pre-generation) show a clear confining ability of the produced foam. A krw reduction by a factor of 1000 is observed very close to the well and close to 100 at 1 m of this well. These values were obtained with a much weaker foam than the laboratory one in order to allow the injection at shallow depth environmental compatible ssure (≤ 4 bar). The reduction in water relative permeability can occur in the presence of a foam that does not cause an extreme reduction of the mobility, indicating that this reduction does not depend on resistance factor (RF) values. There is potential for improvement of the foam as it loses its efficiency with increasing distance from the injection well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managed aquifer recharge of aerobic water into deep aquifers often induces the oxidation of pyrite, which can lead to groundwater acidification and metal mobilization. As circumneutral pH is often maintained by the dissolution of sedimentary calcite or high injectant alkalinity little attention is generally paid to potential alternative pH buffering processes. In contrast, this study analyzed water quality evolution from a 2 year long groundwater replenishment trial in an anaerobic, mostly carbonate free aquifer. While injection of aerobic, very low salinity water triggered pyrite oxidation, the comprehensive field data showed that in many aquifer zones pH was buffered without substantial release of inorganic carbon. A numerical analysis was performed to test and evaluate different conceptual models and suggested that either proton buffering or the dissolution of aluminosilicates, or a combination thereof, can explain the observed, rapid buffering at locations where carbonates were absent. In contrast to many previous managed aquifer recharge [MAR) studies, the oxidation of sedimentary pyrite by nitrate was found to be of minor importance or negligible. The study also highlights that the depositional history of the aquifer, and the associated differences in mineralogy and geochemistry, need to be considered when estimating groundwater quality evolution during the injection of various water types for aquifer replenishment or other management purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Hydrogeology Journal is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: This work presents analytical models which are able to predict contours of concentrations and isotope ratios of organic pollutants in homogeneous aquifers. Four analytical solutions of the advective–dispersive transport equation for reactive transport from the literature differing in assumptions regarding biodegradation kinetics were used. Stable isotope ratios are computed after modelling the individual reactive transport of isotopic species in the aquifer, which respond differently to fractionation by biodegradation or sorption. The main finding of this study is that the isotope ratios in the plumes are very sensitive to the assumptions underlying the biodegradation kinetics in the models. When biodegradation occurs throughout the core of the plume as first-order reaction, the transversal gradients in isotope ratios are smooth. When biodegradation occurs in a bi-molecular reaction with an electron acceptor (modelled by double-Monod kinetics), steep transversal isotope gradients are predicted. When the reaction rates approach instantaneous reaction along the plume fringes, isotope shifts in the core of the plume disappear. A model incorporating plume and fringe degradation produces the most plausible predictions of isotope ratios in this study. It is shown furthermore that isotope fractionation by sorption causes an even different pattern of isotope ratios, with positive shifts restricted to near the forerunning front of an expanding plume. The models developed in this work can serve for the validation of numerical models and may be incorporated in natural attenuation support systems such as e.g. BIOSCREEN. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The inverse problem of groundwater models is often ill-posed and model parameters are likely to be poorly constrained. Identifiability is improved if diverse data types are used for parameter estimation. However, some models, including detailed solute transport models, are further limited by prohibitive computation times. This often precludes the use of concentration data for parameter estimation, even if those data are available. In the case of surface water-groundwater (SW-GW) models, concentration data can provide SW-GW mixing ratios, which efficiently constrain the estimate of exchange flow, but are rarely used. We propose to reduce computational limits by simulating SW-GW exchange at a sink (well or drain) based on particle tracking under steady state flow conditions. Particle tracking is used to simulate advective transport. A comparison between the particle tracking surrogate model and an advective–dispersive model shows that dispersion can often be neglected when the mixing ratio is computed for a sink, allowing for use of the particle tracking surrogate model. The surrogate model was implemented to solve the inverse problem for a real SW-GW transport problem with heads and concentrations combined in a weighted hybrid objective function. The resulting inversion showed markedly reduced uncertainty in the transmissivity field compared to calibration on head data alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Ethyl tert-butyl ether (ETBE) was detected at high concentration (300mgL−1) in the groundwater below a gas-station. No significant carbon neither hydrogen isotopic fractionation of ETBE was detected along the plume. ETBE and BTEX biodegradation capacities of the indigenous microflora Pz1-ETBE and of a culture (MC-IFP) composed of Rhodococcus wratislaviensis IFP 2016, Rhodococcus aetherivorans IFP 2017 and Aquincola tertiaricarbonis IFP 2003 showed that ETBE and BTEX degradation rates were in the same range (ETBE: 0.91 and 0.83mgL−1 h−1 and BTEX: 0.64 and 0.82mgL−1 h−1, respectively) but tert-butanol (TBA) accumulated transiently at a high level using Pz1-ETBE (74mgL−1). An on-site pilot plant (2m3) filled with polluted groundwater and inoculated by MC-IFP, successfully degraded four successive additions of ETBE and gasoline. However, an insignificant ETBE isotopic fractionation was also accompanying this decrease which suggested the involvement of low fractionating-strains using EthB enzymes, but required of additional proofs. The ethB gene encoding a cytochrome P450 involved in ETBE biodegradation (present in R. aetherivorans IFP 2017) was monitored by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (q-PCR) on DNA extracted from water sampled in the pilot plant which yield up to 5×106 copies of ethB gene per L−1. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]