Colloid Transport in Aggregated Porous Media with Intra- and Interaggregate Porosities

• DOI: 10.1021/acs.iecr.8b00501
• Publication Date: 2018-04-18T03:28:40Z
• Authors: H.J. Bai; L. Lassabatere; E. Lamy
• Keywords: [SDE]Environmental Sciences; 02 engineering and technology; [SDE.BE]Environmental Sciences/Biodiversity and Ecology; 0210 nano-technology

Column tracer and colloid transport experiments were performed under both saturated and unsaturated steady state flow conditions in an aggregated porous medium with a bimodal pore size distribution (PSD): intra-aggregate porosity with a pore radius between 10–2 and 10–1 μm and interaggregate porosity ranged between 101 and 103 μm (interporosity). All experiments were carried out under unfavorable conditions for physicochemical attachment to solid–water interfaces, using negatively charged porous media and latex microspheres (1 μm). Both porous media and colloids used in this work were hydrophobic. The results obtained through experimental observations and numerical simulations in the aggregated medium were confronted with those obtained for a sandy medium, characterized by a narrow unimodal PSD with a pore radius which ranged between 101 and 102 μm (interporosity), to explore the relative importance of the PSD on water flow, colloid transport, and deposition. Physicochemical interactions between colloids ...