ParFlow.RT: Development and Verification of a New Reactive Transport Model

Abstract:

In natural subsurface systems, total elemental fluxes are often heavily influenced by areas of disproportionately high reaction rates. These pockets of high reaction rates tend to occur at interfaces, such as the hyporheic zone, where a hydrologic flowpath converges with either a chemically distinct hydrologic flowpath or a reactive substrate. Understanding the affects that these highly reactive zones have on the behavior of shallow subsurface systems is integral to the accurate quantification of nutrient fluxes and biogeochemical cycling. Numerical simulations of these systems may be able to offer some insight. To that end, we have developed a new reactive transport model, ParFlow.RT, by coupling the parallel flow and transport code ParFlow with the geochemical engines of both PFLOTRAN and CrunchFlow. The coupling was accomplished via the Alquimia biogeochemistry API, which provides a unified interface to several geochemical codes and allows a relatively simple implementation of advanced geochemical functionality in flow and transport codes. This model uses an operator-splitting approach, where the transport and reaction steps are solved separately. Here, we present the details of this new model, and the results of verification simulations and biogeochemical cycling simulations of the DOE's East River field site outside of Gothic, CO.