MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS OF NON-FICKIAN DISPERSION IN HETEROGENEOUS POROUS MEDIA

Contaminant breakthrough behaviour in a variety of heterogeneous porous media was measured in laboratory experiments, and evaluated in terms of both the classical advection –dispersion equation (ADE) and the continuous time random walk (CTRW) framework. Heterogeneity can give rise to non-Fickian transport patterns, which are distinguished by ‘‘anomalous'' early arrival and late time tails in breakthrough curves.