Mixed finite element discretization of a model for organic pollution in waters Part I. The problem and its discretization

We consider a mixed reaction diffusion system describing the organic pollution in stream-waters. It may be viewed as the static version of Streeter–Phelps equations relating the Biochemical Oxygen Demand and Dissolved Oxygen to which dispersion terms are added. In this work, we propose a mixed variational formulation and prove its well-posedness. Next, we develop two finite element discretizations of this problem and establish optimal a priori error estimates for the second discrete problem.