Colloid-facilitated transport of strongly sorbing contaminants in natural porous media: Mathematical modeling and laboratory column experiments

Mobile colloidal particles may act as carriers of strongly sorbing contaminants in subsurface materials. Such colloid-facilitated transport can be induced by changes in salinity, similar to freshwater intrusion to a contaminated aquifer saturated with saltwater, or groundwater penetration into a contaminated site saturated with a dumpsite leachate. This process is studied for noncalcareous soil material with laboratory column experiments with sodium and calcium as major cations and with lead as a strongly sorbing model contaminant. The measured breakthrough curves of these elements were described with a mathematical transport model, which invokes release and deposition kinetics of the colloids, together with adsorption and desorption of the relevant ions to the solid matrix as well as to the suspended colloids. In particular, the specific Coupling between colloid and solute transport is considered. The crux of a successful description of such colloidal transport processes is to capture the inhibition of the particle release by adsorbed divalent ions properly and explicitly to consider the dependence of colloid release on the solution chemistry and the chemical conditions at the solid-liquid interface. Experiments and modeling address colloid-facilitated transport of lead out of a contaminated zone and through a noncontaminated zone, including effects of flow velocity and length of the noncontaminated zone. We finally show that colloid-facilitated transport can be suppressed by the injection of a suitably chosen solution of a calcium salt.