Thomas Ritschel

Closed‐flow column experiments—Insights into solute transport provided by a damped oscillating breakthrough behavior

Transport studies that employ column experiments in closed-flow mode complement classical approaches by providing new characteristic features observed in the solute breakthrough and equilibrium between liquid and solid phase. Specific to the closed-flow mode is the recirculation of the effluent to the inflow via a mixing vessel. Depending on the ratio of volumes of mixing vessel and water-filled pore space, a damped oscillating solute concentration emerges in the effluent and mixing vessel. The oscillation characteristics, e.g., frequency, amplitude, and damping, allow for the investigation of solute transport in a similar fashion as known for classical open-flow column experiments. However, the closed loop conserves substances released during transport within the system. In this way, solute and porous medium can equilibrate with respect to physicochemical conditions. With this paper, the features emerging in the breakthrough curves of saturated column experiments run in closed-flow mode and methods of evaluation are illustrated under experimental boundary conditions forcing the appearance of oscillations. We demonstrate that the effective pore water volume and the pumping rate can be determined from a conservative tracer breakthrough curve uniquely. In this way, external preconditioning of the material, e.g., drying, can be avoided. A reactive breakthrough experiment revealed a significant increase in the pore water pH value as a consequence of the closed loop. These results highlight the specific impact of the closed mass balance. Furthermore, the basis for the modeling of closed-flow experiments is given by the derivation of constitutive equations and numerical implementation, validated with the presented experiments.

Quantification of pH-dependent speciation of organic compounds with spectroscopy and chemometrics

Fluorescence and UV/Vis spectra of aqueous solutions with numerous organic compounds are a superposition of single spectra of the chemical species present. Thus, an isolation of individual spectra with chemometrics is required for their quantification. We investigated UV/Vis spectra and fluorescence excitation-emission matrices of vanillic acid, salicylic acid, phenoxyacetic acid and phthalic acid with positive matrix factorization (PMF) and non-negativity constrained parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) in combination with the law of mass action. In consideration of the pH-dependent speciation of organic acids, we first reconstructed the pH-specific spectra of each compound. Using these spectra as known components in a constrained algorithm, we could successfully quantify species of multiple compounds and reconstruct the solution pH. In addition, we estimated the uncertainty of reconstructed spectra and concentrations in order to assess the most probable number of components for PMF/PARAFAC. Therefore, we could derive a framework to reconstruct the number of relevant species and their individual concentration present in spectroscopic data of aqueous solutions containing multiple organic compounds.

Closed‐flow column experiments: A numerical sensitivity analysis of reactive transport and parameter uncertainty

The identification of transport parameters by inverse modeling often suffers from equifinality or parameter correlation when models are fitted to measurements of the solute breakthrough in column outflow experiments. This parameter uncertainty can be approached by performing multiple experiments with different sets of boundary conditions, each provoking observations that are uniquely attributable to the respective transport processes. A promising approach to further increase the information potential of the experimental outcome is the closed-flow column design. It is characterized by the recirculation of the column effluent into the solution supply vessel that feeds the inflow, which results in a damped sinusoidal oscillation in the breakthrough curve. In order to reveal the potential application of closed-flow experiments, we present a comprehensive sensitivity analysis using common models for adsorption and degradation. We show that the sensitivity of inverse parameter determination with respect to the apparent dispersion can be controlled by the experimenter. For optimal settings, a decrease in parameter uncertainty as compared to classical experiments by an order of magnitude is achieved. In addition, we show a reduced equifinality between rate-limited interactions and apparent dispersion. Furthermore, we illustrate the expected breakthrough curve for equilibrium and nonequilibrium adsorption, the latter showing strong similarities to the behavior found for completely mixed batch reactor experiments. Finally, breakthrough data from a reactive tracer experiment is evaluated using the proposed framework with excellent agreement of model and experimental results. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.