Numerical research for contaminant release from un-suspended bottom sediment under different hydrodynamic conditions

Contaminant release from bottom sediments in rivers is one of the main problems to study the environmental hydrodynamics. Contaminant will release into the overlying water column under different hydrodynamic conditions through pore-water in sediment, the release mechanism can be roughly divided into convection diffusion, molecular diffusion and adsorption/desorption. In this article, phosphorus was as a typical contaminant with sorption. Through theoretical analysis of the contaminant release, according to different particle-sized and hydraulic conditions, the mathematics model of contaminant release can be established by the coupled Navier-Stokes equation, Darcy equation, solute transport equation and adsorption/desorption equation. Then that model was verified by flume experiment. Numerical studies show that, under different velocity, the instantaneous concentration of convection diffusion is about 6 times to 50 times larger than that of molecular diffusion during initial stages. The concentration of molecular diffusion is about 1 times to 4 times larger than to that of convection diffusion during late stages. Through analysis, the diffusive boundary layer near the interface can be obtained. In addition, the release will increase with particle size decreasing, and the release will be influenced much more by the size change when the particle size is relatively big under different velocity.