Microscopic Research on Air Sparging I-Network Model Development

摘要

Air sparging is an accepted technology for remediation of soils contaminatedwith volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The micro-mechanics of air sparging ishelpful in understanding the mechanism behind air migration and the spatialdistribution of air phase during air sparging. In order to conduct microscopic researchon air sparging, a 3D network which can capture both the geometrical information ofsoil matrix including pore size and throat size distributions with their correlation andthe topological information of soil matrix including the distribution of coordinationnumbers was proposed. A complete procedure of developing the 3D microscopicnetwork model was developed and presented. The method of estimating or acquiringthe geometrical and topological information of soil structure was also presented.Finally, the validity of the developed network was verified by capturing the mainstructure properties of the soil matrix. The simulation confirmed that the proposedmodel can be used to investigate micro-mechanics of air sparging.