Modeling of Groundwater Contamination by Phenol Released from Spilled Bitumen

Abstract

Leaching of phenol from spilled bitumen into flowing aquifer poses an environmental threat to groundwater contamination. A two‐dimensional model with de‐coupled transfer was built to model phenol propagation in the flowing stream. The model predicted that the produced phenol concentration monitored at an observation well would rise sharply and then decline gradually as the phenol flux emerging from the bitumen surface was depleted with time. The model is useful in estimating the size of the spill, produced phenol concentration, phenol spatial distribution and the time required for the phenol concentration to decline to an environmentally acceptable level. It is well suited to other water pollution problems with chemical spills.

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

“…(1) and (2) can be obtained simultaneously using the techniques of Green's function (Carslaw and Jaeger, 1959) and Duhamel's convolution integral (Bear, 1975;Farlow, 1982). Similar techniques are explained elsewhere (Tang, 1999;Tang, 2003).…”

“…The same set of parameters were used for the adsorption study: D e D 1:8 10 8 cm 2 /s, D w;x D D w;y D 0:457 10 5 cm 2 /s, C o D 4:5 mg/L, based on the actual data from previous work (Tang, 1999;Tang, 2003) and field parameters v D 5 m/year, L H D 1 m, L w D 15 m, L D 10 m (i.e., observation well is located 5 m downstream of the bitumen pad), t D 7 years. The result of C a .L w ; t/ from Eq.…”

“…The decoupling approximation has also led to an explicit analytical unsteady-state solution to the flow equations (Tang, 2003). The solution describes phenol distribution in a flowing aquifer in contact with the stationary spilled bitumen as well as the phenol concentration monitored at an observation well.…”

“…Note that phenol flux into the aquifer is time dependent. Phenol transport can be described by the following two decoupled flow equations (Lake, 1989;Tang, 2003). The first is phenol transport into the aquifer:…”

A review of the occurrence, distribution, and impact of bitumen seeps on soil and groundwater in parts of southwestern Nigeria

“…Anthropogenic processes involving the exploration or exploitation of bitumen have resulted in different cases of environmental degradation. For example, phenol released from spilled bitumen or produce water used in the thermal recovery of bitumen from tar sand deposits contaminates groundwater in parts of Australia (Tang, 2003 ). In Alberta Canada, an increase in oil-sand mining, and in situ bitumen recovery has increased groundwater pollution risks in the oil sands region of Peace, Athabasca, and Beaver River basins (Timoney & Lee, 2009 ).…”