Nitrate transport in a fracture-skin-matrix system under non-isothermal conditions

Subsurface leaching of agricultural runoff has been identified to pose a serious hazard to the soil-water ecosystem and human health, mostly due to the associated contamination with nitrate. Our understanding of the nature of contaminant spread in the vadose and aquifer zones has been improved from recent mechanistic models on the flow and transport of contaminants through fractured porous media. The present study aims to explore the impacts of skin formation in a fracture-matrix aquifer system onto the nitrogen species transport under non-isothermal settings using numerical modeling. A finite-difference scheme was employed to capture the nitrogen concentration profile and kinetics of transformation by solving the derived partial differential equations. The results show evidence of an additional mass transfer from fracture to skin so as to reduce the migration of nitrogen species (NO₃-N and N₂) at the fracture-matrix interface thereby reducing the peak concentration of N₂ by nearly 1.5 times in fracture after denitrification. Although the thermal conductivity of the rock matrix has a direct impact on the temperature distribution in fracture-skin-matrix profiles, the presence of skin has a cooling effect for a high-temperature influent (45 °C), which also deteriorates the propagation of organic N₂ and NO₃-N, within the fracture. An increase in the temperature coefficient of skin has resulted in an apparent reduction in nitrogen species migration, indicating the thermo-chemical feasibility of an intermediate skin favoring the mass transfer processes. The findings of this study can be extended toward realistic estimation of groundwater contamination risks and for the design of biological filters for in situ remediation.