Parametric study of hydraulic barrier for contaminant transport under transient conditions

Hydraulic barriers are very often used as short-term remediation measure to protect the endangered environment from different accidents in more permeable strata where the pollution will migrate very quickly. The parametric study to be presented was prepared as part of the development of finite element code to model contaminant transport under transient ground water flow during PhD research at the Czech Technical University in Prague.

At first a brief description of the program development will be presented and than the actual modelling of the parametric study will be discussed. The study concentrates on a protection of controlled waters from a failure of landfill liner in highly permeable strata. Different scenarios in terms of extraction rates in extraction wells lasting two 18-month periods were studied to determine the most effective strategy to protect the environment. In this situation the hydraulic barrier proposed is designed just as short-term solution until more permanent will be found and be able to be implemented.