Urbanization Challenges in Emerging Economies 20

Analytical Modeling for Solute Transport in a Homogeneous Medium

Sushree Swagatika Swain, Ph.D.1; and Pradip Kumar Das, M.ASCE2
1
Research Scholar, School of Water Resources, IIT, Kharagpur, India 721302. E-mail:
sushreeswain1991@gmail.com
2
Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Veer Surendra Sai Univ. of Technology, Burla, Odisha,
India 768018. E-mail: pkdas.vssut@gmail.com
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ABSTRACT
In the present scenario, developing countries are experiencing a rapid growth due to
urbanization. Many of the watersheds of India are facing water quality issues caused by
anthropogenic sources like high industrialization, population growth, and urbanization. Fluid
flow and solute transport to the subsurface environment are the most detrimental activities in the
urbanized area and it is one of the biggest challenge facing watershed managers. As it is very
difficult to eliminate the source activities permanently, a thorough understanding of flow
processes combined with transport mechanisms is required in order to minimize such water
quality hazard. This study seeks an interaction of principal transport mechanisms like advection
and dispersion and its effect on solute movement. To solve and analyze these problems, an
analytical scheme is used which is based on a mathematical combination of the variational
iteration method and the homotopy perturbation method. Sensitivity analysis is carried out with
changing transport parameters like velocity and dispersion of the media and concentration
profiles are studied using the analytical model. It has found that the potential of solute
concentration is more with the high flow velocity and however conversely varies with respect to
the dispersion of the porous medium.
KEYWORDS: Solute transport; Homogeneous porous media; variational iteration method;
homotopy perturbation method; Sensitivity analysis

INTRODUCTION
Uncontrolled urbanization and the effect of growing population are crucial challenges for the
water management in urbanized zones of the emerging- and developing countries. From an
environmental point of view, the impact of urban development and groundwater represents one
of the most important aspects of developing cities. Groundwater, which is the largest available
source of fresh water, is believed to be consumed without any water treatment. However, due to
urbanization, population growth, high industrialization and agricultural activities, it is exposed to
contamination. The interface between urban development and groundwater may be explained in
the relation to the land use pattern and stage of metropolitan development on affecting the
quantity and quality of groundwater (Figure 1).In this urbanized era, the transport of solutes
through porous media is observed in a wide variety of fields and applications. These solutes
infiltrate into the subsurface environment, travel through the unsaturated zone, and dissolve in
the saturated zone, which can cause waterborne diseases and results in serious health hazards. In
order to minimize these hazards, a detailed understanding of flow processes combined with
solute transport mechanisms of groundwater is essential.

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Figure 1. Impact of urbanization on groundwater (Putra et al. 2008)

Large numbers of research works have been carried out to study the solute transport
mechanisms in subsurface aquifer systems. Van Genuchtena and Alves (1982) listed a collection
of mathematical solutions to various forms of the convective-dispersive solute movement
equation. Yates (1992) proposed an analytical solution scheme for one-dimensional solute
transport through porous media with an experimental dispersion function. Sim and
Chrysikopoulos (1995) built up a diagnostic model for virus transport in one-dimensional
homogeneous, saturated porous media for both constant flux and in addition to constant
concentration boundary condition. Ratha et al. (2009) developed a one-dimensional virus
transport for groundwater and estimated transport parameters. In addition, they predicted the
virus movement in both advection and dispersion dominated transport. Kumar et al. (2009)
emphasized solute dispersion along with steady flow through a non-homogeneous medium,
uniform flow through the homogeneous medium and temporally dependent flow in the non-
homogeneous medium for a finite domain. They modified their work by changing their domain
from finite to semi-finite media (2010) and obtained solutions using Laplace transformation
technique for the defined problems.
Moving to analytical methods, there are so many mathematical techniques adopted by
researchers. Matinfer et al. (2010) proposed a variational homotopy perturbation technique
(VHPM) for the solution of Fisher’s equation and compared the result with approximations
obtained from the variational iteration method. Porshokouhi et al. (2010) adopted a new
difference scheme with high accuracy for solving the convection-diffusion equation, solved this
equation by homotopy perturbation method, and stated that this method is a reliable one. Daga
and Pradhan (2013) developed an analytical model using a mathematical combination of the
Variational Iteration Method and Homotopy Perturbation Method for solving the advection-
diffusion equation. Allahviranloo et al. (2014) applied VHPM technique to solve Korteweg-de
Vries and Burgers equations that are a simple an effective method. Easif et al. (2015) developed
VHPM technique to solve the Benjamin-Bona-Mahony equation and showed that this method is
more accurate than the homotopy perturbation method.

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From the pieces of literature, it can be observed that most of the trend studies have focused
on experimental and numerical research works on solute movement through porous media.
Similarly, the variational homotopy perturbation method is developed to solve different
mathematical testing functions. However, there are very few attempts to study approach of
VHPM to solute transport in porous media. In this present study, the governing equation for
solute movement in homogeneous porous media i.e. advection-dispersion equation (ADE) is
solved by VHPM. The effect of different model parameters is observed through a sensitivity
analysis with changing the transport parameters.
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VARIATIONAL HOMOTOPY PERTURBATION METHOD

To highlight VHPM, the following nonlinear differential equation is considered:
Lu  Nu  g ( x) (1)
where L and N are linear and nonlinear operators, respectively g(x) is a known analytical
function. According to the variational iteration method, a correction function can be written as
follows:
x
un 1 ( x)  un ( x)    ( )( Lun ( )  Nun ( )  g ( ))d (2)
0

where λ is a Lagrange multiplier, which can be determined optimally by a variational iteration

technique. un is the nth approximate solution and un denotes a restricted variation, i.e. δun  0 .
Now, by applying the homotopy perturbation technique,

  (n) 

x x


n 0
p un  u0 (x)  p   ( )  p L(un (t ))  N  p un  d    ( ) g ( )d
(n)

 n 0 n 0
(n)


(3)
0 0

which is the variational homotopy perturbation technique and is obtained by the coupling of
correction function of the variational iteration method and Adomians polynomials. A comparison
of like powers of p gives solutions of various orders.

VHPM APPROACH TO ADVECTION-DISPERSION EQUATION

Advection-diffusion equation defines the solute transport due to the combined effect of
advection and dispersion in a porous medium. It is a partial differential equation of parabolic
type which is based on the principle of mass conservation with Fick’s law. The one-dimensional
advection-dispersion equation can be expressed as:
C  C C
 (D ) V (4)
t x x x
where V is the groundwater flow velocity i.e. advection velocity; D is the dispersion coefficient
and C is solute concentration which is a dependent variable that changes according to the
physical problem. The initial stage of solute movement shows steady and uniform flow
conditions.
Considering initial approximation as:
C ( x,0)  Ci e x (5)
where Ci is the initial concentration. Thus applying VHPM to solute transport equation i.e.
advection-dispersion equation;

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 t
   ( n )     ( n )   
 P (n)
Cn  C0( x )  P 0  nt
C ( )  V  

P C n 

 D   P Cn    d (6)
n 0   n  0 x   n  0  xx  
Comparing the coefficient of like powers of P, we have:
P0  C0 ( x, t )  Ci e x (7)
P1  C1 ( x, t )  Ci e x t ( D  V ) (8)
1
P 2  C2 ( x, t )  Ci e x ( t )2 ( D  V )2 (9)
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2
1
P3  C3 ( x, t )  Ci e x ( t )3 ( D  V )3 (10)
6
1
P 4  C4 ( x, t )  Ci e x ( t )4 ( D  V )4 (11)
24
So on. The series of the solution is given by:
C  x, t   C0  x, t   C1  x, t   C2  x, t   C3  x, t   C4  x, t  (12)
Collecting the power terms and substituting in the series of the solution, we will get a set of
the solution as follows:
1
C ( x, t )  Ci e  x  Ci e  x t ( D  V )  Ci e  x ( t ) 2 ( D  V ) 2
2 (13)
1 1
 Ci e ( t ) ( D  V )  Ci e ( t ) ( D  V )
 x 3 3  x 4 4

6 24

Figure 2. Normalised concentration profile of solute movement for the different time scale
(V= 0.6m/hr, D= 0.2m2/hr)

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The solution in Eq. (13) describes the uniform flow with uniform solute dispersion and
constant source concentration at the boundary. Various normalized spatial solute concentration
profiles are plotted by using VHPM technique. The solute distribution through the porous

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medium is shown in Figure 2. The plot shows a normalized concentration profile for the different
time with constant source concentration throughout the media. The advection and dispersion
coefficients are taken as constant for the spatial concentration profile. According to the plot, the
concentration decreases with respect to distance. The concentration profile behaves as
exponential decaying nature.
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Figure 3. Normalised concentration profile of solute movement for the different horizontal
distance with increasing time (V= 0.6m/hr, D= 0.2m2/hr)

Figure 4. Normalised concentration profile of solute movement for the different time with
increasing horizontal distance (V= 0.6m/hr, D= 0.2m2/hr)
The spatiotemporal plot of solute movement is presented in Figure 3 and Figure 4. From the
above plot, it can be noted that initially there is no concentration i.e. at the boundary (x=0).
According to an increase in time, the extent of concentration decreases within the media. The

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decreasing nature of the profile is due to the combined effect of advection and dispersion
processes.
According to the dispersion process, the solute quantity displaces from the high
concentration gradient to a low concentration gradient. Therefore, the intensity of solute
concentration decreases through the travel distance also increases with time with respect to a
single value of the dispersion coefficient. As the dispersion coefficient increases, the degree of
concentration decreases accordingly. This result can be studied from Figure5, which is a plot of
the solute concentration profile of different dispersion coefficients with constant velocity at a
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steady time of 0.5hrs.

Figure 5. Spatial concentration profile of solute movement for different dispersion constant

Figure 6. Spatial concentration profile of solute movement for different flow velocities
Similarly, Figure 6shows the effect of different flow velocities with constant dispersion at

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0.5hrs of constant time throughout the media. From the profile, it is clear that with an increase in
flow velocity, the solute movement is more as compared to the case of low flow velocity. In
addition, travel distance is more in case of higher flow velocity. The transport of solute by flow
velocity of media is termed as advection. Theoretically, in the advection process, the solute
movement occurs from higher velocity gradient to lower velocity gradient.
When the value of V=0m/hr, the result resembles that of the dispersion controlled process.
Therefore, it can be observed that for low values of flow velocity and Peclet number is less than
one, the dispersion process dominates. The Peclet number represents the relative importance of
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advection and dispersion as the transport process. Similarly, when there is no dispersion in the
media, it behaves as advection dominating flow. In this case, the Peclet number value is greater
than one. If the Peclet number is maintained as one, both the advection and dispersion processes
will take place and better observations can be obtained.

CONCLUSION
In this research work, the variational homotopy perturbation scheme is proposed for the
solution of one-dimensional solute migration through a homogeneous porous medium. The effect
of model parameters with a reliability of solution technique is studied by different concentration
profiles. According to the result, higher values of flow velocity leads to a higher travel distance
of the solutes through the porous medium. However, the impact of the dispersion coefficient is in
a converse way to the solute movement in the media. Form every plot; it is clear that the area
near to contaminated sources is more affected than far away area. In the presence of a constant
point source of solute, the density of solute concentration decreases with distance and with time
at any given location in the direction of solute movement, the concentration level decreases. The
novelty of variational homotopy perturbation technique brings simplicity in solving the defined
problems, without sacrificing its inherent elegance.
The proposed analytical model can be validated with real-world problems. In this research
work, the homogeneous soil is taken into account. However, the variability in soil composition in
the strata, if taken, that will represent more in situ conditions, also this may be more appealing.
The real data with suitable boundary conditions can be more appropriate for every problem. The
knowledge about these problems helps in designing soil remediation program and in maintaining
sufficient distance for drinking water wells from contaminated sources to minimize water quality
hazard and making the drinking water safe for domestic consumption.

REFERENCES
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Kumar, A., Jaiswal, D. K., & Kumar, N. (2009). Analytical solutions of one-dimensional
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Kumar, A., Jaiswal, D. K., & Kumar, N. (2010). Analytical solutions to one-dimensional
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