Development of Analytical Mass Transport Model for the Pollutant Migration in the Subsurface Environment

To facilitate the predictions of movement and behavior of chemicals, a one-dimensional analytical model has been developed to predict the solute transport through the unsaturated soil zone. The characteristics feature of this model is that it takes into account the influence of various processes like adsorption, leaching, volatilization, degradation, and plant uptake simultaneously. This could be achieved by introducing a common rate constant term called as total elimination rate, which is the summation of rate constants derived from the degradation, leaching, volatilization and plant uptake processes. It is this feature of the model that sets it apart and excels from that of conventional model or process specific models or site-specific models, which tends to be expensive, time consuming, and data exhaustive. The application of the developed model has been illustrated by considering the agricultural sub soil environment. The breakthrough curves for concentration versus time and depth were generated for nitrates and phosphates and used to determine the input parameters for the developed analytical transport model.