Effective Design of Permeable Reactive Barriers for Contaminated Groundwater Remediation

Permeable reactive barriers (PRBs) are used for groundwater contaminated with chemicals such as chromate, trichloroethylene (TCE), and tetrachloroethylene (PCE). PRBs require only low maintenance costs, but require high initial costs because large scale excavation is required to install the equipment. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships of three factors, the design parameters of PRBs, the performance of PRBs as measured by numerical analysis of groundwater seepage, and the characteristics of contaminated groundwater, in order to evaluate optimum design parameters that reduce the high installation costs. In conclusion, the installation cost of the PRB system was significantly dependent on the funnel width and the reactant content. Finally, a method to estimate the costoptimized funnel width and reactant content from the groundwater velocity at a real contaminated site is proposed.