Detailed modeling of soil vapor extraction systems

ABSTRACT: This paper presents results of a numerical investigation of soil vapor extraction systems (SVE) at the laboratory scale. Modeling of transport, dispersion and interfacial transfers is done using effective pa-rameters of the local volume averaging theory. The main focus is on the detailed description of the physical and chemical processes that govern the kinetics of mass and energy transfer across the solid, fluid and gaseous phases. Simulations are carried out in two dimensions. The system of partial differential equations is discretized by a finite volume method and an implicit Euler time stepping scheme. Computational effort is reduced notably through techniques that enable spatial and temporal adaptivity, through a standard multigrid method as well as through a problem-oriented sparse-matrix storage concept. This study provides a suitable basis for the model-ing and simulation of three-dimensional field scale problems as well as enhanced SVE techniques that use e.g. thermal energy or oxidative chemicals.