• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.214-222
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• 2004

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2004.09a
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• pp.29-32
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• 2004

Gaseous partitioning tracer test has been used for determining the volume and spatial distribution of residual non-aqueous phase liquid (NAPL) in the unsaturated soils. In this study, an experimental method for measuring the content of gas-exposed NAPL as well as that of total NAPL in a sand during air sparging was developed. Two different gaseous phase NAPL-partitioning tracers were used; n-pentane, with very low water solubility, was used as the tracer that partitions into NAPL that is only in contact with the mobile gas, and chloroform, with fairly good water solubility, was selected for detecting total NAPL content in the sand. Helium and difluromethanewere used as the non- reactive tracer and water-partitioning tracers, respectively. Using n-decane as a model NAPL (NAPL saturation of 0.018), 25.6% of total NAPL was detected by n-pentane at the water saturation of 0.68. Oniy 9.1% of total NAPL was detected by n-pentane at the water saturation of 0.84. This result implies that the quantity of gas-exposed NAPL increased about three times when the water saturation decreased from 0.84 to 0.68. At the water saturation of 0.68, more than 90% of total NAPL was detected by chloroform while 65.8% of total NAPL was detected by chloroform at the water saturation of 0.84. Considering that the removal rate of NAPL during air sparging for NAPL-contaminated aquifer is expected to be greatly dependent upon the spatial arrangement of NAPL phase with respect to the mobile gas, this new approach may provide useful information for investigating the mass transfer process during air-driven remedial processes fer NAPL-contaminated subsurface environment.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.27 no.spc
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• pp.75-91
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• 2022

Differences in subsurface migration of LNAPL/DNAPL contaminants caused by a selection of 3-phase (aqueous, NAPL, and gas) relative permeability function (RPF) models in numerical modeling were investigated. Several types of RPF models developed from both experimental and theoretical backgrounds were introduced prior to conducting numerical modeling. Among the RPF models, two representative models (Stone I and Parker model) were employed to simulate subsurface LNAPLs/DNAPLs migration through numerical calculation. For each model, the spatiotemporal distribution of individual phases and the mole fractions of 6 NAPL components (4 LNAPL and 2 DNAPL components) were calculated through a multi-phase and multi-component numerical simulator. The simulation results indicated that both spilled LNAPLs and DNAPLs in the unsaturated zone migrated faster and reached the groundwater table sooner for Stone I model than Parker model while LNAPLs migrated faster on the groundwater table under Parker model. This results signified the crucial effect of 3-phase relative permeability on the prediction of NAPL contamination and suggested that RPF models should be carefully selected based on adequate verification processes for proper implementation of numerical models.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2002.04a
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• pp.159-162
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• 2002

Innovative and nondestructive characterization techniques have been developed to locate and quantify nonaqueous phase liquids (NAPLs) in the vadose and saturated zones in the subsurface environment. One such technique is the partitioning interwell tracer test (PITT). The PITT is a simultaneous displacement of partitioning and non-partitioning tracers through a subsurface formation. Partitioning tracers will partition into the NAPL during their transport through NAPL-contaminated formations. Mean travel times of partitioning and non-partitioning tracers are used to estimate the quantity of NAPL encountered by the displaced tracer pulse. Travel times are directly proportional to the partitioning coefficient and the volume of NAPL contacted in the subsurface environment. This paper discusses the conceptual background, design and implementation of PITTs. (This document has not been subjected to Agency review and therefore does not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency, and no official endorsement should be inferred.)

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.3-13
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• 2001

It has been known that nonlinear characteristics of sorption affect the transport behavior of water soluble pollutants in soils. However detailed experimental studies have not been performed to verify the effect of non-linearity of adsorption isotherm on transport of chemicals in porous media. In this research, the distortion of breakthrough curves of a cationic surfactant (cetylpyridinium chloride, CPC) in a engineered stainless steel column packed with glass beads were investigated. Glass beads with about 110 $\mu\textrm{m}$diameter coated with a thin n-decane film were used as the media providing the sorption surface for CPC. The CPC adsorption isotherm on the surface of n-decane from aqueous solution was a typical Langmuir type. The breakthrough curve of CPC using step Input showed a late breakthrough on the front side and early breakthrough on the back side accordance to the shape of the isotherm. The retardation factor of CPC was found to be a strong function of the input concentration, which also a manifestation of the non-linearity of the isotherm. The retardation factors for the CPC with step input agreed with those of pulse input that the maximum concentrations are controlled to be the same as the step input concentrations. This results support the validity of the unproven field practices of using hydrogeotracers with non-linear adsorption isotherms to determine the hydrogeological parameters, e.g., NAPL saturation, air-water or NAPL-water interfacial areas.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.124-127
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• 2003

Laboratory scale experiments on in-situ ozonation were carried out to delineate the effects of liquid phases, such as soil water and nonaqeous phase liquid (NAPL) on the transport of gaseous ozone in unsaturated soil. Soil water enhanced the transport of ozone due to water film effect, which prevent direct reaction between soil particles and gaseous ozone, and increased water content reduced the breakthrough time of ozone because of increased average linear velocity of ozone and decreased air-water interface area. Diesel fuel as NAPL also played a similar role with water film, so the breakthrough time of ozone in diesel-contaminated soil was significantly reduced compared with uncontaminated soil. However, ozone breakthrough time was retarded with increased diesel concentration, because of high reactivity of diesel fuel with ozone. In multiphase liquid system of unsaturated soil, the ozone transport was mainly Influenced by nonwetting fluid, diesel fuel in this study.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.25-31
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• 2007

Characterizing the risk posed by a mixture of chemicals is a challenging task due to the chemical interactions of individual components that may affect their physical behavior and hence alter their exposure to receptors. In this study, cell tests that represent subsurface environment were carried out using benz[a]anthracene (BaA) and p-xylene focusing on phasetransforming interaction to verify increased mobility and risk of highly sorbed pollutants in the presence of less sorbed, mobile liquid pollutants. A transport model was also developed to interpret results and to simulate the same process on a field scale. The experimental results showed that BaA had far greater mobility in the presence of p-xylene than in the absence of that. The main transport mechanisms in the vadose zone were by dissolution to p-xylene or water. The transport model utilizing Defined Time Steps (DTS) was developed and tested with the experimental results. The predicted and observed values showed similar tendency, but the more work is needed in the future study for more precise modeling. The field-scale simulation results showed that transport of BaA to groundwater table was significantly faster in the presence of NAPL, and the oral carcinogenic risk of BaA calculated with the concentration in groundwater was 15${\sim}$87 times larger when mixed with NAPL than when solely contaminated. Since transport rate of PAHs is very slow in the subsurface without NAPL and no degradation of PAHs was considered in this simulation during the transport, the increase of risk in the presence of NAPL is expected to be greater for the actual contaminated site.

• Clean Technology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.206-222
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• 2019

Recently, various multiphase flows have been developed, and among them some models have been commercialized. However, most of them have been developed based on a pressure-based approach; therefore, various numerical difficulties were involved inherently. Accordingly, in order to overcome these numerical difficulties, a multiphase flow model, MultiPhaSe flow (MPS), following a fractional-flow based approach was developed. In this study, by combining a contaminant transport module describing an enhanced dissolution effect of a surfactant with MPS, a MultiPhaSe flow and TranSport (MPSTS) model was developed. The developed model was verified using the analytical solution of Clement. The MPSTS model can simulate the process of surfactant enhanced aquifer remediation including interphase mass transfer and contaminant transport in multiphase flow by using the coupled particle tracking method and Lagrangian-Eulerian method. In this study, a surfactant was used in a non aqueous phase liquid (NAPL) contaminated area, and the effect of hydro-geological heterogeneity in the layered media on remediation efficiency was studied using the developed model. According to the numerical simulation, when hydraulic conductivity in a lower layer is 10 times, 20 times, and 50 times larger than that in an upper layer, the concentration of dissolved diesel in the lower layer is much higher than that in the upper layer because the surfactant moves faster along the lower layer owing to preferential flow; thus, the surfactant enhances dissolution of residual non aqueous phase liquid in the lower layer.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2003.09a
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• pp.282-284
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• 2003

Multi-phase extraction of LNAPLs not only floating on groundwater but also captured in soil pores was studied in a simulated soil system. The extraction rate of LNAPL under the MPE conditions was much higher than the rate under usual hydraulic gradient conditions. The WE might be especially useful for recovery of oils in fine-textured soils such as clay-dominant soils. The vacuum-enhanced transport of LNAPL in soils also depended on the properties of LNAPL such as viscosity and density as well as soil textures.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2009.09a
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• pp.1372-1377
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• 2009

For the remediation of the subsurface contaminated by nonaqueous phase liquids(NAPLs), it is important to characterize the NAPL zone properly. Conventional characterization methods provide data at discrete points. To overcome the weak points of conventional characterization methods, the partitioning tracer method has been developed and studied. The average saturation of NAPL($S_n$), which is the representative and continuous saturation value within contaminated site, can be calculated by comparing the transport of the partitioning tracers to that of the conservative tracer in the partitioning tracer method. In this study, the application of the partitioning tracer method in heterogeneous media was investigated. To represent the heterogeneous condition of subsurface, a two-dimensional soil box was divided into four layers and each layer contained different sized soils. Soils in the soil box were contaminated by the mixture of kerosene and diesel, and partitioning tracer tests were conducted before and after the contamination using methanol as conservative tracer and 4-methyl-2-pentanol, 2-ethyl-1-butanol, and hexanol as partitioning tracers. The response curves of partitioning tracers from contaminated soils were separated and retarded in comparison with those from non-contaminated soils. The contamination of soils by NAPLs, therefore, can be detected by partitioning tracer method considering these retardations of tracers. From our experiment condition, the average saturation of NAPLs calculated by partitioning tracer method using the methanol as conservative tracer and hexanol as partitioning tracer showed the highest accuracy, though all results were underestimated. Further studies, therefore, were needed for improving the accuracy using the partitioning tracer test in heterogeneous media.