Author(s)

Yun Deng & Marina Pantazidou

Abstract

This paper focuses on the effect of capillary pressure hysteresis on predicting the extent of the contaminated area caused by a lighter than water nonaqueous phase liquid (LNAPL) spill in the subsurface and investigates factors that determine when this effect is important. The numerical code used to model LNAPL spills is the T2VOC module of the TOUGH family of codes, developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. For this study, the code was modified to allow for hysteretic behavior in the capillary pressure-saturation constitutive relationship. Comparisons of experimental and numerical results showed that the hysteretic simulations predicted better the behavior of the LNAPL plume,

Keywords