Reactive transport modeling of multicomponent cation exchange at the laboratory and field scale

Multicomponent ion exchange models have been successful in describing the chromatographic separation of cations in both laboratory and field settings. Their chief advantage lies in their ability to capture the competitive effects of other cations that may be present. By incorporating exchanger activity coefficients calculated on the basis of the Gibbs-Duhem equation applied to the exchanger phase, it is possible to correct for the non-ideality of exchange. The use of multiple exchange sites can also substantially improve the ability of the cation exchange models to describe adsorption and retardation. All of these benefits are associated with relatively little additional computational burden. Even where the cost of the multicomponent cation exchange calculations are considered too high, the models are useful in calculating distribution coefficients for the environmental conditions of interest