A decomposition method for solving coupled multi-species reactive transport problems

Concerns over the problems associated with mixed waste groundwater contamin ation have created a need for more complex models that can represent reacti ve contaminant fate and transport in the subsurface. In the literature, par tial differential equations describing solute transport in porous media are solved either for a single reactive species in one, two or three dimension s, or for a limited number of reactive species in one dimension. Those solu tions are constrained by many simplifying assumptions. Often, it is desirab le to simulate transport in two or three dimensions for a more practical sy stem that might have multiple reactive species. This paper presents a decom position method to solve the partial differential equations of multi-dimens ional, multi-species transport problems that are coupled by linear reaction s. A matrix method is suggested as a tool for describing the reaction netwo rk. In this way, the level of complexity required to solve the multi-specie s reactive transport problem is significantly reduced.