Numerical Modeling of Biologically Reactive Transport near Nutrient Injection Well

Abstract

A reactive, radial-transport model to simulate biological processes near a nutrient injection well is presented. An improved numerical procedure that incorporates the attractive features of Eulerian-Lagrangian and reaction-operator split methods is used to solve the model. The numerical procedure is efficient, stable, and mass conserving. An in-situ biostimulation model incorporating aerobic kinetics is solved to demonstrate the usefulness of the modeling procedure and to study the sensitivity of biomass distribution to variations in biokinetic parameters. The resulting mathematical model adequately describes near-well biological processes under varying conditions. The sensitivity analysis shows that the microbial detachment and attachment processes are important transport parameters that control biomass distribution in an aquifer. The results strongly suggest that other expressions that describe these processes and their relationship to growth rate should be examined.