The presence of NonAqueous Phase Liquids (NAPLs) at many sites around the world in the subsurface is a major environmental problem, because it potentially can cause widespread and long term contamination of groundwater aquifers. A thorough understanding of the subsurface behavior of these organic contaminants is indispensable for contaminant site assessment and design of cleanup strategies.
Our overall objective is to study the migration and final distribution of NAPL contamination after the occurrence of a spill by performing both laboratory scale physical experiments and numerical simulations.
The laboratory experiments consist of NAPL infiltration studies into various porous media. Additionally, constitutive relationships , necessary for numerical modelling, are determined independently. Finally, a numerical simulation code is employed to predict the migration and final distribution of the organic contaminant given a scenario equal to that of the physical simulations and using the independently measured constitutive parameters.