Reservoir concept

In densely populated areas, traffic is responsible for massive exhausts of nitrous oxides, soot, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, and carbon monoxide. Traffic emissions also markedly contribute to the formation of ozone in the lower parts of the atmosphere. In large cities, fine particle exposure causes excess mortality which varies between one and five percent in the general population. Contamination of the ground water reservoirs with organic solvents has caused concern in many countries due to the persistent nature of the pollution. A total exposure assessment that takes into consideration all exposures via all routes is a relatively new concept, the significance of which is rapidly increasing. 

This chapter focuses on types of models used to describe the functioning of biogeochemical cycles, i.e., reservoir or box models. Certain fundamental concepts are introduced and some examples are given of applications to biogeochemical cycles. Further examples can be found in the chapters devoted to the various cycles. The chapter also contains a brief discussion of the nature and mathematical description of exchange and transport processes that occur in the oceans and in the atmosphere. This chapter assumes familiarity with the definitions and basic concepts listed in Section 1.5 of the introduction such as reservoir, flux, cycle, etc. 

As an illustration of the concept introduced above, let us consider a coupled two-reservoir system with no external forcing (Fig. 4-6). The dynamic behavior of this system is governed by the two differential equations... 

Bolin, B. and Rodhe, H. (1973). A note on the concepts of age distribution and transit time in natural reservoirs. Tellus 25,58-62. 

The concept of average residence time, or turnover time, provides a simple macroscopic approach for relating the concentrations in ocean reservoirs and the fluxes between them. For the single box ocean in Fig. 10-17 the rate of change of the concentration of component n can be expressed as... 

The concept of hole doping into charge reservoir layers can be explained with a number of examples. The materials are treated as if they are ionic. The simplest example is provided by the series of phases with a charge reservoir (AO AO), typified by La2Cu04, already described. 

Second, the fluctuation is delayed by a time 5t which is a function of the residence time t, of the element in the reservoir. For an infinite residence time the argument of the tangent tends towards n/2 and the delay 5f towards T/4, while for a short residence time, the delay tends towards zero. As expected, reactive elements respond more rapidly than inert elements. The phase shift and the damping factor relating input to output concentrations represent the angular phase and argument of a complex function known as the transfer function of the reservoir. Such a function, however, is most conveniently introduced via Laplace and Fourier transforms. Applications of these geochemical concepts to the dynamics of volcanic sequences can be found in Albarede (1993). 

We briefly review processes in which isotopic fractionations may be recorded in isotopically distinct reservoirs that are preserved in nature. These concepts have been extensively covered in the H, C, O, and S isotope literature, and we illustrate several examples for the non-traditional stable isotope systems discussed in this volume. One of the simplest processes that produces isotopically distinct reservoirs would be slow reaction of substance A to B, where A and B remain open to complete isotopic exchange during the process. This is commonly referred to as closed system equilibrium, and the changes in isotopic compositions that occur may be defined by the exact relation ... 

In the earlier concepts of the interface stracture, the metal was treated as a reservoir of electrons, uniformly distributed in the bulk of the phase. Spatial distribution of charges was considered mainly on the solution side. No such considerations were made for the solid electrodes, except for the... 

Note Sample introduction systems such as reservoir inlets, chromatographs, and various types of direct probes (Chap. 5.3) are of equal importance to other ionization methods. The same holds valid for the concepts of sensitivity, detection limit, and signal-to-noise ratio (Chap. 5.2.4) and finally to all sorts of ion chromatograms (Chap. 5.4). 

---