This course is still being developed. It has been offered under Selected Topics in Geology GEOL/60095/80095. It is intended to be offered every other year during Fall Semester.

Textbook: Contaminant Hydrogeology by C.W. Fetter Macmillan Publishing Company 1993.

Pre-requisites: Introduction to Contaminant Hydrology - GEOL/42067/52067 and Advanced Hydrogeology GEOL/62067/72068 or special permission .

The course is intended as a natural extension of the Introduction to Contaminant Hydrology - GEOL/42067/52067, providing in-depth focus on the fate and transport of solutes in the subsurface environments.

The course is conducted as a series of lectures with take-home problems and student seminar-type papers. The take-home problems will require use of a computer with at the very least 4MB RAM. Some rudimentary understanding of FORTRAN is helpful, but not essential. Each student will have to write at least one term-paper and give seminar-type talk on an assigned topic.

The following is a sequence of the course topics:

1. INTRODUCTION

1. Ground water as a resource
2. Types of ground water contaminants
3. Drinking water standards
4. Risk and drinking water
5. Sources of ground water contamination
6. Relative ranking of ground water contamination sources
7. Ground water contaminantion as a long-term problem
8. Review of mathematics and the flow equation

2. MASS TRANSPORT IN SATURATED MEDIA

1. Transport by diffusion
2. Transport by advection
3. Mechanical dispersion
4. Hydrodynamic dispersion
5. Advection-dispersion equation for solute transport
6. Analytical solutions of the advection-dispersion equation
7. Effects of transverse dispersion
8. Measurements of dispersivity
9. Scale effects on dispersion
10. Stochastic models of solute transport
11. Fractal geometry approach to field-scale dispersion
12. Deterministic models of solute transport
13. Transport in secondary porosity

3. TRANSFORMATION, RETARDATION AND ATTENUATION OF SOLUTES

1. Classification of chemical reactions
2. Sorption
3. Equlibrium surface reactions
4. Kinetic sorption models
5. Sorption of hydrophobic compounds
6. Homogeneous reactions
7. Radioactive decay
8. Biodegradation
9. Colloidal transport

4. FLOW AND MASS TRANSPORT IN THE VADOSE ZONE

1. Soil as porous medium
2. Soil colloids
3. The electrostatic double layer
4. Salinity effects on hydraulic conductivity of soils
5. Flow of water in the vadose zone
6. Mass transport in the vadose zone
7. Equilibrium models of mass transport
8. Non-equilibrium models of mass transport
9. Anion exclusion
10. Preferential flow in the vadose zone

5. MULTIPHASE FLOW

1. Basic concepts
2. Migration of light non-aqueous phase liquids (LNAPLs)
3. Measurements of the thickness of the floating product
4. Effect of ground water table oscillations on the distribution of LNAPLs
5. Migration of dense non-aqueous phase liquids (DNAPLs)
6. Monitoring for LNAPLs and DNAPLs

6. INORGANIC CHEMICALS IN GROUND WATER

1. Units of measurements and concentration
2. Chemical equilibrium and the law of mass action
3. Oxidation-reduction reactions
4. pH and Eh
5. Metal complexes
6. Chemistry of non-metallic inorganic contaminants
7. Chemistry of metals
8. Radioactive isotopes
9. Geochemical zonation

7. ORGANIC COMPOUNDS IN GROUND WATER

1. Physical properties of organic compounds
2. Organic structure and nomenclature
3. Petroleum distillates
4. Functional groups
5. Degradation of organic compounds
6. Field examples
7. Analysis of organic compunds in ground water

8. GROUND WATER AND SOIL MONITORING

1. Monitoring well design
2. Sample collection
3. Multiple-level devices for ground water monitoring
4. Well sampling
5. Soil gas monitoring
6. Soil water sampling

9. SITE REMEDIATION

1. Source control measures
2. Pump-and-treat systems
3. Treatment of extracted ground water
4. Recovery of LNAPLs and DNAPLs
5. Leaking underground storage tanks
6. Soil-vapor extraction
7. In-situ bio-remediation
8. Use of surfactants, soil venting, sparging and other methods

10. REVIEW