Impact of Salinity on the Air–Water Partition Coefficient of Gas Tracers
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 131, Issue 9
Abstract
The use of a gas partitioning interwell tracer test (PITT) has been proposed as a standard approach to the measurement of field-scale vadose zone water saturation fractions. The accuracy of the saturation measurement is largely dependent on the determination of the air–water partition coefficient, , of the tracers. In practice, is strongly influenced by the physical and chemical properties of the site water. In this study, column tests were conducted to investigate the impact of salinity on tracer partition coefficients for two promising gas phase candidate tracers, dibromomethane and dimethylether. Sodium thiosulfate was used as a salinity surrogate. The dynamic values of the two partitioning tracers were measured for sodium thiosulfate concentrations between 0% and 36% by weight. Methane was used as the nonpartitioning tracer for all experiments. values were found to decrease significantly with increasing sodium thiosulfate concentration. Similar correlations between values and sodium thiosulfate concentration were found for both of the partitioning tracers.
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Acknowledgments
The writers thankfully acknowledge the two anonymous reviewers for their comments that helped this paper to reach its final form. The funding for this research was provided by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, the Department of Energy Environmental Management Science Program, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The writers want to thank Mr. Eric Bruesewitz and Dr. Bruce Rouse. This work is a continuation of the preliminary work conducted by Mr. Bruesewitz. Dr. Rouse helped with setting up the experiments.
References
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 131 • Issue 9 • September 2005
Pages: 1354 - 1357
Copyright
© 2005 ASCE.
History
Received: Nov 20, 2003
Accepted: Feb 11, 2005
Published online: Sep 1, 2005
Published in print: Sep 2005
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