H33O-07:
A Detailed Re-Examination of the Push-Pull Tracer Test at the MADE Site
Wednesday, 17 December 2014: 3:10 PM
David Andrew Benson, Colorado School of Mines, Hydrologic Science and Engineering, Golden, CO, United States
Abstract:
A push-pull tracer test was performed at the MADE site intensively cored area (ICA). The tracer recovery portion lasted approximately 420 hours. Several attempts to simulate the test have indicated that the classical advection-dispersion equation (ADE) does not reproduce several features of the tracer recovers, including arrival time of the peak concentration and the amount of mass in the late-time concentration “tail.” We re-examine the push-pull test with several questions in mind: 1) Can the rising and falling water table explain the breakthrough curve (BCT) anomalies? 2) Can the inclusion of facies boundaries and very fine-scale direct-push hydraulic conductivity (DPK) information in the simulations adequately resolve the BTC? 3) What is the added benefit of a non-Fickian (multi-rate mass transfer) term in the ADE at various levels of upscaling?
