Tailing of the breakthrough curve in aquifer contaminant transport: Equivalent longitudinal macrodispersivity and occurrence of anomalous transport

We analyse the mass arrival (breakthrough curve) at control planes at × of a plume of conservative solute injected at time t = 0 in the plane × = 0. The formation is of random three-dimensional stationary and isotropic conductivity K, characterized by the univariate normal distribution f(Y), Y = lnK, and the integral scale I. The flow is uniform in the mean, of velocity U, and longitudinal transport is quantified by f(z,x), the probability density function (pdf) of travel time r at x. We characterize transport by an equivalent longitudinal macrodispersivity α_L(x), which is proportional to the variance of the travel time. If α_L is constant, transport is coined as Fickian, while it is anomalous if α_L increases indefinitely with x. If f(z,x) is normal (for × I), transport is coined as Gaussian and the mean concentration satisfies an ADE with constant coefficients. For the subordinate structural model transport is anomalous, in spite of the closeness of the conductivity distribution to the lognormal one. To further analyse anomalous behaviour, a relationship is established between the shape of f(K) for K→0 and the behaviour of α_L, arriving at criteria for normal or anomalous transport. The model is used in order to compare results with the recent ones presented in the literature, which are based on the Continuous Time Random Walk (CTRW) approach. It is found that a class of anomalous transport cases proposed by CTRW methodology cannot be supported by a conductivity structure of finite integral scale.