Two Dimensional Heavy Metal Transport Model for Natural Watercourses

This work presents the development and calibration of a two‐dimensional (depth‐averaged) river flow, sediment transport and heavy metal transport model in natural watercourses. Because heavy metals occur in dissolved and adsorbed phases, implementing the active‐layer concept for sediment transport computation enabled the development of a heavy metal transport model that accounts for pollutant moving in dissolved phase, adsorbed on suspended sediment, adsorbed on bed‐load, deposited in the active‐layer of the river bed or adsorbed on sediment in deeper strata. The proposed concept also enables the modelling of pollutant exchange processes using accessible sediment particle surface area for suspended and bed sediment separately. The presented heavy metal transport model is able to manage sediment mixtures found in natural watercourses using an arbitrary number of sediment size‐classes, distinguishing in this way smaller size‐classes that engage in interaction with the pollutant. Using field measurements for a reach of the Danube River, simulations were conducted for water flow, sediment transport and heavy metal transport. While some discrepancies between measured and computed values for pollutant concentrations were observed, the model reproduced the water and sediment contamination quite reasonably with acceptable mass conservation errors. The simulations also gave an insight in the general behaviour of the monitored heavy metals in the considered river reach. Therefore, it can be concluded that the developed model is suitable for simulating complex flow, sediment transport and heavy metal transport conditions in natural watercourses. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.