Evolution of plume geometry, dilution and reactive mixing in porous media under highly transient flow fields at the surface water-groundwater interface

Highly transient boundary conditions affect mixing of dissolved solutes in groundwater. An example of these transient boundary conditions occurs at the surface water-groundwater interface, where the water level in rivers can change rapidly due to the operation of hydropower plants, leading to a regime known as hydropeaking. Inspired by this phenomenon, this work studies at laboratory scale the effects of fluctuating surface water bodies on solute transport in aquifers. We performed flow-through experiments at two different flow velocities and under steady and transient flow conditions where a conservative tracer was injected in the system and its concentration measured with optical imaging methods. The experimental results were quantitatively interpreted with numerical simulations implementing a non-linear velocity-dependent dispersive transport model. We estimated plume dilution by computing the dilution index and its evolution as well as two key geometrical metrics of the transient plumes: the perimeter and the area. We further investigated reactive mixing and mixing enhancement considering mixing-controlled bimolecular reactions using different critical mixing ratios. In general, highly transient boundary conditions lead to a larger area, perimeter and plume dilution and the results show greater relative enhancement for the scenarios with low groundwater flow velocity. A linear relationship was observed between the evolution of the area and the dilution index of the plumes for the transient flow scenarios investigated. Considering reactive transport and mixing-limited reactions at the surface water-groundwater interface, we identified different dilution and reaction dominated regimes, characterized, respectively, by increasing and decreasing plume entropies at different mixing ratios of the reactants. Furthermore, reactive mixing was enhanced by transient flows leading to a faster degradation of contaminant plumes compared to corresponding steady flow conditions.