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EFFECT OF MODEL COMPLEXITY ON THE PREDICTION OF CONTAMINANT MASS FLUX
Citation:
Simon*, M A. EFFECT OF MODEL COMPLEXITY ON THE PREDICTION OF CONTAMINANT MASS FLUX. Presented at Fourth International Conference on the Remediation of Chlorinated and Recalcitrant, Monterey, CA, May 27, 2004.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
When is a soil vapor extraction (SVE) project complete? Regulatory entities are beginning to define site closure based on predicted contaminant mass flux degradation to the underlying aquifer. However, regulatory entities do not give guidance on how to perform the modeling. This poster will discuss different approaches to modeling. In one approach, a one-dimensional model with an extremely simplistic physical domain resulted in a very conservative soil clean-up value. The second approach used a two-dimensional model with more realistic layered soil structure and resulted in a more physically accurate representation of the SVE process. In the third approach, a still more complex three-dimensional model was used. The more complex the model, the more accurately the model can describe the actual physical system but the model complexity increases the cost of running the model and the costs of obtaining the parameters. This work is our first attempt to optimize the modeling process.