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Case Study 6 



Groundwater Remediation 



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Map of Oak Ridge Waste Storage Facility 



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Computational Grid for Waste Area Grouping 6 



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Modeling the Effect of Capping WAG 6 Waste Burial Trencfies 



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Computed Water Table Elevations after Capping 



Contamination of groundwater by potentially 

 toxic organic liquids is one of the more serious 

 environmental problems facing the Nation. The 

 release of such liquids has been widespread, 

 originating from sources ranging from gasoline 

 service stations to large industrial facilities. 

 Once trapped in the subsurface these liquids 

 serve as long-term sources of aquifer contamina- 

 tion. Remediation schemes include optimal liq- 

 uid recovery pumping schemes, solvent and sur- 

 factant flushing, and steam injection. 



Hierarchical models of groundwater ITow and 

 associated chemical transport are needed at the 

 local, basin, and regional scales to assess waste 

 transport and remediation schemes. Current 

 models are limited computationally in two ways: 



first, models can only include a limited number 

 of physical and chemical processes before com- 

 puting runtimes become prohibitive; second, 

 models lack adequate field data to characterize 

 geologic and chemical factors that intluence 

 contaminant behavior. High performance com- 

 puting systems are needed both to model com- 

 plex transport processes and to overcome data 

 limitations by using computationally intensive 

 parameter estimation techniques. 



The Partnership in Computational Science 

 (PICS) consortia project funded by the DOE 

 HPCC program is exploring new approaches to 

 modeling groundwater flow at waste sites in 

 extremely complex hydrogeologic settings. The 

 consortia consists of members froin Brookhaven 



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