Transport of Adsorbable Constituents in Ground Water and Soil Systems

12 Transport of Adsorbable Constituents in Ground Water and Soil Systems 

Soil and groundwater carriers can be looked at as giant chromatography columns. The concepts on transport of chemicals accompanied by concommittant adsorption and desorption can be borrowed from chromatography theory. Nevertheless, there are a few differences of importance  

1) Particles of the soil matrix are usually very polydisperse, and heterogeneously packed  

2) one has to distinguish between transport in groundwater aquifers which are saturated with water and in the unsaturated subsurface zone where pores contain water and air (this might lead to very heterogeneous flow structure)  

3) cracks and root zones may lead to preferential flow paths resulting in channeling (Borkovec et al., 1991). 

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