Jesus Carrera

Numerical formulation for a simulator (CODE_BRIGHT) for the coupled analysis of saline media

Presents numerical aspects of the program CODE_BRIGHT, which is a simulator for COupled DEformation, BRIne, Gas and Heat transport problems. It solves the equations of mass and energy balance and stress equilibrium and, originally, it was developed for saline media. The governing equations also include a set of constitutive laws and equilibrium conditions. The main peculiarities of saline media are in the dissolution/precipitation phenomena, presence of brine inclusions in the solid salt and creep deformation of the solid matrix.

Nonisothermal multiphase flow of brine and gas through saline media

We propose a general formulation for nonisothermal multiphase flow of brine and gas through saline media. The balance equations include mass balance (three species), equilibrium of stresses and energy balance (total internal energy). Salt, water and air mass balance equations are established. The balance of salt allows the establishment of the equation for porosity evolution due to solid skeleton deformation, dissolution/precipitation of salt and migration of brine inclusions. Water and air mass balance equations are also obtained. Two equations are required for water: total water in the medium and water present in solid phase brine inclusions. The mechanical problem is formulated through the equation of stress equilibrium. Finally, the balance of internal energy is established assuming thermal equilibrium between phases. Some general aspects of the constitutive theory are also presented.

A comparison of seven geostatistically based inverse approaches to estimate transmissivities for modeling advective transport by groundwater flow

This paper describes the first major attempt to compare seven different inverse approaches for identifying aquifer transmissivity. The ultimate objective was to determine which of several geostatistical inverse techniques is better suited for making probabilistic forecasts of the potential transport of solutes in an aquifer where spatial variability and uncertainty in hydrogeologic properties are significant. Seven geostatistical methods (fast Fourier transform (FF), fractal simulation (FS), linearized cokriging (LC), linearized semianalytical )LS), maximum likelihood (ML), pilot point (PP), and sequential self-calibration (SS)) were compared on four synthetic data sets. Each data set had specific features meeting (or not) classical assumptions about stationarity, amenability to a geostatistical description, etc. The comparison of the outcome of the methods is based on the prediction of travel times and travel paths taken by conservative solutes migrating in the aquifer for a distance of 5 km. Four of the methods, LS, ML, PP, and SS, were identified as being approximately equivalent for the specific problems considered. The magnitude of the variance of the transmissivity fields, which went as high as 10 times the generally accepted range for linearized approaches, was not a problem for the linearized methods when applied to stationary fields; that is, their inverse solutions and travel time predictions were as accurate as those of the nonlinear methods. Nonstationarity of the “true” transmissivity field, or the presence of “anomalies” such as high-permeability fracture zones was, however, more of a problem for the linearized methods. The importance of the proper selection of the semivariogram of the log10 (T) field (or the ability of the method to optimize this variogram iteratively) was found to have a significant impact on the accuracy and precision of the travel time predictions. Use of additional transient information from pumping tests did not result in major changes in the outcome. While the methods differ in their underlying theory, and the codes developed to implement the theories were limited to varying degrees, the most important factor for achieving a successful solution was the time and experience devoted by the user of the method.

Scale effects in transmissivity

Heterogeneity accounts for several paradoxes in groundwater flow and solute transport. One of the most striking observations is the emergence of scale effects in transmissivity, that is, the increase in effective transmissivity (or hydraulic conductivity, for that matter) with increasing scale of observation. Traditional stochastic approaches, where transmissivity is treated as a multilog-normal random function, lead to a large-scale effective transmissivity equal to the geometric average of local measurements. We present several field cases in which large-scale transmissivities are indeed larger than the geometric average of local tests. This suggests that the assumption of multilog-normality may not be valid in many cases, even if point T values display a log-normal distribution. We conjecture that scale dependence of T may, in part, be a consequence of high T zones being better connected than average or low T zones, a feature which may occur in many geological environments, but which is not consistent with multinormal log-T fields. We go on to generate a suite of log-T fields with a normal distribution for point values but non-multinormal spatial correlation. In all our fields, high T zones show longer correlations than average of low T zones. By simulating flow through these synthetic fields under simple boundary conditions, and estimating their effective transmissivity values, we conclude that these types of departures from the multilog-normality assumption lead consistently to scale effects.

A procedure for the solution of multicomponent reactive transport problems

[1] Modeling transport of reactive solutes is a challenging problem, necessary for understanding the fate of pollutants and geochemical processes occurring in aquifers, rivers, estuaries, and oceans. Geochemical processesinvolving multiple reactive species are generally analyzed using advanced numerical codes. The resulting complexity has inhibited the development of analytical solutions for multicomponent heterogeneous reactions such as precipitation/dissolution. We present a procedure to solve groundwater reactive transport in the case of homogeneous and classical heterogeneous equilibrium reactions induced by mixing different waters. The methodology consists of four steps: (1) defining conservative components to decouple the solution of chemical equilibrium equations from species mass balances, (2) solving the transport equations for the conservative components, (3) performing speciation calculations to obtain concentrations of aqueous species, and (4) substituting the latter into the transport equations to evaluate reaction rates. We then obtain the space-time distribution of concentrations and reaction rates. The key result is that when the equilibrium constant does not vary in space or time, the reaction rate is proportional to the rate of mixing, * T u D Vu, where u is the vector of conservative components concentrations and D is the dispersion tensor. The methodology can be used to test numerical codes by setting benchmark problems but also to derive closed-form analytical solutions whenever steps 2 and 3 are simple, as illustrated by the application to a binary system. This application clearly elucidates that in a three-dimensional problem both chemical and transport parameters are equally important in controlling the process.

SIMULATION OF GROUNDWATER AGE DISTRIBUTIONS

The objective of our work is to examine how to simulate the age of groundwater in such a way that it can be compared to actual measurements. We start by showing that computation of kinematic age, the one obtained by tracking water along streamlines, is ill posed in heterogeneous aquifers. This, together with its inability to account for mixing processes, makes it inadequate for comparison with age measurements, which are the result of some averaging of the age distribution in the water sample (the type of averaging depends on the measurement procedure). Therefore we go on to write the equations for the cumulative distribution function of residence time under transient flow conditions. This allows us to derive transient equations for the mean age, as well as for the higher-order moments of its distribution, which generalize previous results by others. These moments can be used for approximating age measurements, which need not be equal to the mean age of the water sample. Using both a synthetic and a real example, we show that mean age is an acceptable estimate of radiometric age measurements in many cases. Including a second-order correction (variance of residence time distribution) always improves results. On the other hand, higher-order approximations converge slowly for old (compared to half-life) waters, to the point that third-order approximations often worsen the results.

Emerging organic contaminants in groundwater in Spain: A review of sources, recent occurrence and fate in a European context

This paper reviewed the presence of emerging organic contaminants (EOCs) that have been found in the groundwater in Spain in both, rural and urban areas. The list of compounds included pesticides, pharmaceutical active compounds (PhACs), selected industrial compounds, drugs of abuse (DAs), estrogens, personal care products and life-style compounds. The main sources of pollution and possible pathways have been summarised in this review. EOCs are likely to enter to the aquifer mainly through the effluents of waste water treatment plants (WWTPs) and are present in groundwater at concentrations of ng/L to μg/L. The most studied compounds in Spanish groundwater were pesticides followed by industrial compounds and PhACs. It is important to mention that compared to other water bodies, such as rivers, groundwater is considerably less contaminated, which may be indicative of the natural attenuation capacity of the aquifers. However, some EOCs have sometimes been detected at higher concentration levels in the aquifer than in the rivers, indicating the need for further research to understand their behaviour in the aquifers. For a wide array of compounds, their maximum concentrations show values above the European groundwater quality standard for individual pesticides (0.1 μg/L). Therefore, to preserve groundwater quality against deterioration it is necessary to define environmental groundwater thresholds for the non-regulated compounds.

A mathematical formulation for reactive transport that eliminates mineral concentrations

We present a concise and general mathematical formulation for reactive transport in groundwater for general applications. By means of linear algebraic manipulations of the stoichiometric coefficients of the chemical reactions we are able to reduce the number of unknowns of the equations to be solved to the number of degrees of freedom according to thermodynamic rules. We present six formulations that differ from each other by number and type of unknowns and discuss their advantages and disadvantages with respect to the two most important numerical solution methods, the Sequential Iteration Approach (SIA) and the Direct Substitution Approach (DSA). Our conclusion is that the proposed reduction of the number of variables is of special interest for the DSA. We have applied one of these formulations to an example of the flushing of saline water by fresh water.

Pumping tests in heterogeneous aquifers: An analytical study of what can be obtained from their interpretation using Jacob's Method

Interpretation of pumping tests to estimate hydraulic parameter values is typically based on the assumption of aquifer homogeneity. The applicability of the traditional methods of interpretation in real aquifers can be questioned, since the evaluation of the drawdown curves observed at different locations in a single test may not result in one consistent set of hydraulic parameters. Thus most hydrogeologists tend to look at estimated transmissivities (T) as some average property of the medium, while estimated storativities (S) are disregarded in some cases, particularly when they are obtained from data measured at the pumping well. An analytical study of drawdown under radially convergent flow toward a single point in heterogeneous aquifers shows that large time drawdown values form a straight line on a drawdown versus log time plot. Jacobs method consists of obtaining estimates for T and S from the slope and intercept of this line. We find that even in a heterogeneous field, these estimates provide valuable information about the aquifer. Estimated T values for different observation points tend to converge to a single value, which corresponds to the effective T derived under parallel flow conditions. Estimated storativities, however, display higher variability, but the geometric mean of the Sest values can be used as an unbiased estimator of the actual S. Thus it appears that although Jacobs method was originally derived for homogeneous media, it can provide valuable information in real aquifers.

Occurrence of 95 pharmaceuticals and transformation products in urban groundwaters underlying the metropolis of Barcelona, Spain

The present paper presents the occurrence of 72 pharmaceuticals and 23 transformation products (TPs) in groundwaters (GWs) underlying the city of Barcelona, Spain. Thirty-one samples were collected under different districts, and at different depths. Aquifers with different geologic features and source of recharge were included, i.e., natural bank filtration, infiltration from wastewater and water supply pipes, rainfall recharge, etc. Antibiotics were the most frequently found compounds detected at levels reaching 1000 ng L(-1). Natural bank filtration from the river that receives large amounts of effluents from waste water treatment plants (WWTPs), turned out being the most influencing source of contamination, thus GW showed high range of compounds and concentrations as high as or even higher than in the river itself. In general, TPs were found at lower concentrations than the corresponding parent compounds, with some exceptions, such as 4OH propranolol and enalaprilat.