Modeling of Pollutant Transport from a Stationary Phase into a Flowing Stream with Reversible Adsorption

Modeling of pollutant transport from a stationary phase into a flowing stream with reversible adsorption was presented. Spilled bitumen compounds, soluble both in oil and water, could leach slowly into the subsurface aquifer, posing a threat of groundwater contamination to the environment. Molecular diffusion of phenol in bitumen was the rate-determining step and the transfer mechanism could be adequately described by a de-coupled second-order convective-dispersive equation. The results showed that phenol concentration decreased with the distance from the bitumen-water interface, and the phenol profile extended less into the aquifer with adsorption. It was concluded that phenol mobility was reduced by a delay factor related to the adsorption and desorption characteristics.