Forward and back diffusion of reactive contaminants through multi-layer low permeability sediments

Contaminants stored in the low permeability sediments will continue to threaten the adjacent shallow groundwater system after the aquifer is remediated. Understanding the storage and discharge behavior of contaminants in the aquitards is essential for the efficient remediation of contaminated sites, but most of the previous analytical studies focused on nonreactive solutes in a single homogenous aquitard. This study presents novel analytical solutions for the forward and back diffusion of contaminants through multi-layer low permeability sediments considering abiotic and biotic environmental degradation. Three representative source depletion patterns (i.e., instantaneous, linear, and exponential patterns) were selected to describe the dissolution of dense non-aqueous phase liquids (DNAPL) in the aquifer more realistically. At the forward diffusion stage, the mass storage of contaminants in the aquitards with the instantaneous pattern is the largest, nearly twice that with the exponential pattern. A simple equivalent homogeneous model is generally adopted in the risk assessment. However, relative to the proposed multi-layer model, it will significantly underestimate the onset of the back-diffusion of heterogeneous aquitards and overestimate the persistence of aquifer plumes. The previously-reported semi-infinite boundary assumption is also not applicable, with a maximum error of over 200% in the long-term prediction of back diffusion behavior of a thin aquitard. Moreover, when the degradation half-life is less than 16 years, less than 10% of the contaminants stored in the aquitards will diffuse into the overlying aquifer, suggesting that biostimulation or bioaugmentation can effectively mitigate back-diffusion risk. Overall, the proposed diffusion-reaction coupled model with multi-layer media is of great value and high demand in predicting the back-diffusion behavior of heterogeneous aquitards and guiding the soil bioremediation.