Effect of sorption kinetics on the transport of solutes in streams

To provide an appropriate description of the transport of a reactive substance in a stream, it is important to include a kinetic description of sorption in a transport model. In this study, first-order sorption kinetics was taken into account in both the transient storage zone and the stream water, and analytical expressions for relative error in statistical moments of the residence time PDF, resulting from disregarding sorption kinetics, were derived. The sorption rate coefficient in the water was found to influence the error in the expected value, and the error was found to approach infinity as the travel distance or sorption rate coefficient approaches zero. The sorption rate coefficient in the storage zone influences only higher-order moments. For sufficiently long distances, the error in the variance was found to be more pronounced when sorption kinetics in the storage zone was disregarded, than when sorption kinetics in the stream water was disregarded. Parameter values from a tracer experiment with 51Cr revealed that the relative error in the variance could be more than 100%, if sorption kinetics in the storage zone is disregarded.