Dynamic Dispersion Coefficient of Solutes Flowing in a Circular Tube and a Tube-Bundle Model

Abstract

Mathematical formulations have been proposed and verified to determine dynamic dispersion coefficients for solutes flowing in a circular tube with fully developed laminar flow under different source conditions. Both the moment analysis method and the Green's function are used to derive mathematical formulations, while the three-dimensional (3D) random walk particle tracking (RWPT) algorithm in a Cartesian coordinate system has been modified to describe solute flow behavior. The newly proposed formulations have been verified to determine dynamic dispersion coefficients of solutes by achieving excellent agreements with both the RWPT results and analytical solutions. The differences among transverse average concentration using the Taylor model with and without dynamic dispersion coefficient and center-of-mass velocity are significant at early times but indistinguishable when dimensionless time (tD) approaches 0.5. Furthermore, compared to solutes flowing in a 3D circular tube, dispersion coefficients of solutes flowing in a two-dimensional (2D) parallel-plate fracture are always larger for a uniform planar source; however, this is not always true for a point source. Solute dispersion in porous media represented by the tube-bundle model is greatly affected by pore-size distribution and increases as standard deviation of pore-size distribution (σ) increases across the full-time scale.