Assessment of a non-traditional operator split algorithm for simulation of reactive transport

A non-traditional operator split (OS) scheme for the solution of the advection-diffusion-reaction (ADR) equation is proposed. The scheme is implemented with the recently published central scheme [A. Kurganov, E. Tadmor, New high-resolution central schemes for non-linear conservation laws and convection-diffusion equations, J. Comput. Phys. 160 (2000) 241–282] to accurately simulate advection-reaction processes. The governing partial differential equation (PDE) is split into two PDEs, which are solved sequentially within each time step. Unlike traditional methods, the proposed scheme provides a very efficient method to solve the ADR equation for any value of the gridPéclet number. An analytical mass balance error analysis shows that the proposed non-traditional scheme incurs a splitting error, which behaves differently to the splitting error incurred in traditional OS schemes. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the robustness of the proposed scheme. © 2005 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.