Use of deuterated water as a conservative artificial groundwater tracer

Conservative tracers are necessary to obtain groundwater transport velociti es at the field scale. Deuterated water is an effective tracer for this pur pose due to its similarity to water, chemical stability, nonreactivity, eas e of handling and sampling, relatively neutral buoyancy, and reasonable pri ce. Reliable detection limits of 0.1 mg deuterium/L may be obtained in fiel d tests. A field example is presented in which deuterated water, bromide, a nd pentafluorobenzoic acid are used as groundwater tracers. Deuterated wate r appeared to be transported conservatively, producing almost identical bre akthrough curves as that of other soluble tracers.