Author(s)

Bernard Mabiala^1*, Timothée Nsongo², Dominique Nkounkou Tomodiatounga¹, Christian Tathy¹, Dominique Nganga³

¹Laboratoire Mécanique Energétique et Ingénierie, Ecole Nationale Supérieure Polytechnique, Université Marien Ngouabi, Brazzaville, Congo.
²Groupe de Recherche sur les les Propriétés Physico-Chimiques et Minérales des Matériaux, Faculté des Sciences et Techniques, Université Marien Ngouabi, Brazzaville, Congo.
³Formation Doctorale Sciences de l’Environnement, Faculté des Sciences et Techniques, Université Marien Ngouabi, Brazzaville, Congo.

In this paper, we are interested by the dissolution of NAPL (Non-Aqueous Phase Liquid) contaminants in heterogeneous soils or aquifers. The volume averaging technique is applied to 2D systems with Darcy-scale heterogeneities. A large-scale model is derived from a Darcy-scale dissolution model in the case of small and large Damkholer numbers, i.e., for smooth or sharp dissolution fronts. The resulting models in both cases have the mathematical structure of a non-equilibrium dissolution model. It is shown how to calculate the resulting mass exchange and relative permeability terms from the Darcy-scale heterogeneities and other fluid properties. One of the important finding is that the obtained values have a very different behavior compared to the Darcy-scale usual correlations. The large scale correlations are also very different between the two limit cases. The resulting large-scale models are compared favorably to Darcy-scale direct simulations.

Modeling, NAPL Dissolution, Porous Media, Large Scale Average Mass Exchange Coefficient, Large Scale Permeabilities

Mabiala, B. , Nsongo, T. , Tomodiatounga, D. , Tathy, C. and Nganga, D. (2017) Two-Dimensional Modeling of the NAPL Dissolution in Porous Media: Heterogeneities Effects on the Large Scale Permeabilities and Mass Exchange Coefficient. Computational Water, Energy, and Environmental Engineering, 6, 56-78. doi: 10.4236/cweee.2017.61005.