One-dimensional contaminant transport model for the design of soil-bentonite slurry walls

A user oriented computer model (TRANS1D) was developed for application to the analysis and design of vertical soil-bentonite barriers. TRANS1D is a collection of analytical and numerical solutions to the one dimensional advective-dispersive-reactive (ADR) equation. The primary objective in developing TRANS1D was to enable the designer of a barrier system to evaluate the potential system performance with respect to contaminant transport, without performing difficult and time consuming field or laboratory experiments. Several issues related to model application are discussed, including identification of governing transport processes, specification of boundary conditions, and parameter estimation. Model predictions are compared with the results of laboratory column experiments conducted with soil bentonite barrier material under diffusion-dominated conditions. Good agreement between model calibrations and experimental results was noted, with calibrated diffusion coefficients for organic contaminants consistent with literature values.