Modelling surfactant-enhanced transport of PAH

Within the framework of a comprehensive investigation concerning the use of surfactants to enhance the in-situ remediation of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) contaminations in the subsurface, SMART (Streamtube Model for Advective and Reactive Transport), a multicomponent transport model, was developed to study the processes (interactions) taking place when surfactants and PAH migrate through porous media as solutes. The model is an adaption of a Lagrangian method allowing for separate treatment of conservative transport and reactive processes. It accounts for the hydraulic as well as for the physico-chemical heterogeneity of porous aquifers. The system of processes implemented in the model has been shown to be able to represent the behaviour of PAH and surfactants in porous media at the laboratory scale. Here, the transport model is applied to a simpli ed two-dimensional remediation scenario ( eld scale). It is shown how surfactants may in uence the clean-up of