Analysis of the impact of injection mode in transport through strongly heterogeneous aquifers

Large-scale advective transport through highly heterogeneous 3D formations is investigated using highly resolved numerical simulations and simple analytic models. Investigations are focused on impacts of two types of contaminant injection on transport through isotropic formations where flow conditions are uniform in the average. Transport is quantified by analyzing breakthrough curves for control planes at various distances from the injection zone. In flux-proportional injection mode local mass in injection zone is proportional to local groundwater flux; this setup models many practical cases such as contaminant injection through wells. In resident concentration mode local concentration in injection zone is constant. Results show that impacts of injection mode on breakthrough curves and their moments are strong and they persist for hundreds of correlation scales. The resident concentration mode leads to a fatter tails of the breakthrough curves, while the peaks are generally underpredicted. For a synthetic porous medium with logconductivity variance of 8, dispersivity computed using resident concentration mode at control plane 100 integral scales away from the injection zone was about 10 times larger than corresponding one for flux-proportional mode. Hence, injection mode impacts on transport through highly heterogeneous formations are strong and they persist for large distances from the injection zone.