Bent Henning Skov

A mini slug test method for determination of a local hydraulic conductivity of an unconfined sandy aquifer

Abstract A new and efficient mini slug test method for the determination of local hydraulic conductivities in unconfined sandy aquifers is developed. The slug test is performed in a small-diameter (1 inch) driven well with a 0.25 m screen just above the drive point. The screened drive point can be driven from level to level and thereby establish vertical profiles of the hydraulic conductivity. The head data from the test well are recorded with a 10 mm pressure transducer, and the initial head difference required is established by a small vacuum pump. The method described has provided 274 spatially distributed measurements of a local hydraulic conductivity at a tracer test site at Vejen, Denmark. The mini slug test results calculated by a modified Dax slug test analysing method, applying the elastic storativity in the Dax equations instead of the specific yield, are in good accordance with the results from two natural gradient tracer experiments performed at the test site. The original Dax, the Bouwer and Rice, and the Chirlin analysing methods all led to an underestimation of the effective hydraulic conductivity by a factor of more than 2, when compared with the tracer tests. In contrast the spherical flow model of Karasaki et al. overestimated the results of the tracer tests by approximately a factor 1.4. The Dax and the Cooper et al. methods, assuming only radial flow to the partially screened well, yielded a better approximation of the horizontal hydraulic conductivity, than the Chirlin method, which also considers axial flow. This fact is suggested to be a result of aquifer anisotropy, as a significant higher horizontal than vertical hydraulic conductivity may suppress the significance of the axial flow component.

Mitigation of methane emissions in a pilot-scale biocover system at the AV Miljø Landfill, Denmark: 1. System design and gas distribution

Greenhouse gas mitigation at landfills by methane oxidation in engineered biocover systems is believed to be a cost effective technology, but so far a full quantitative evaluation of the efficiency of the technology in full scale has only been carried out in a few cases. A third generation semi-passive biocover system was constructed at the AV Miljø Landfill, Denmark. The biocover system was fed by landfill gas pumped out of three leachate collection wells. An innovative gas distribution system was used to overcome the commonly observed surface emission hot spot areas resulting from an uneven gas distribution to the active methane oxidation layer, leading to areas with methane overloading. Performed screening of methane and carbon dioxide surface concentrations, as well as flux measurement using a flux chamber at the surface of the biocover, showed homogenous distributions indicating an even gas distribution. This was supported by results from a tracer gas test where the compound HFC-134a was added to the gas inlet over an adequately long time period to obtain tracer gas stationarity in the whole biocover system. Studies of the tracer gas movement within the biocover system showed a very even gas distribution in gas probes installed in the gas distribution layer. Also the flux of tracer gas out of the biocover surface, as measured by flux chamber technique, showed a spatially even distribution. Installed probes logging the temperature and moisture content of the methane oxidation layer at different depths showed elevated temperatures in the layer with temperature differences to the ambient temperature in the range of 25-50°C at the deepest measuring point due to the microbial processes occurring in the layer. The moisture measurements showed that infiltrating precipitation was efficiently drained away from the methane oxidation layer.