Modeling of Organic Liquid Entrapment and Surfactant Enhanced Recovery in Heterogeneous Media

This paper provides an overview of modeling investigations designed to ex­plore the influence of textural heterogeneities on the migration, persistence, and surfactant enhanced solubilization of organic liquid contaminants in the subsur­face. Multiphase flow and transport simulators are used to model the entrapment and surfactant enhanced recovery of perchloroethylene from saturated media. A laboratory-based linear driving force expression is used to represent solubilization. Simulation results illustrate the influence of local permeability variations and mass transfer limitations on remediation performance. Additional model simulations of a controlled laboratory sandbox experiment are used to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of current modeling approaches.