Activity

Tetramethylturkeytetrazinni was released in a pond located 200 meters away from the main
drinking water municipal well in Montaita. The concentration in the pond is 100 mg/L, and
the threshold concentration for toxicity is 10 mg/L. You are the director of the environmental
department in Johnson Inc. Consulting Group, and were hired by Montaitas municipality to
determine how much time they have before they need to shut down the well in order to
prevent health affects in the population.
After sampling and carrying out lab assays, youve determined that the contaminant in the
pond is known to sorb onto the aquifer. The groundwater flows from the pond to the well at an
average velocity of 100 m/yr. You measure the sorption constant (Kd) and it ranges between
0.1 and 1 (L/kg).
Your job is to let Montaitas municipality know how much time they have before they need to
shut down the well. You need to provide these times based on:
The low and high sorption constants
The timing of the average concentration that breakthrough
The timing of the threshold concentration for toxicity
The aquifer is constituted by sedimentary material with a porosity of 0.3 and bulk density of
1.36 g/cm3. Assume that the molecular effective diffusion coefficient is 0.01 m2/yr and the
longitudinal dispersivity is 2 m.

Hint: use the OgataExcel spreadsheet and remember that the average concentration is defined as (C+Co).
Solutions

Time (years)

Kd = 0.1 L/kg Kd = 1.0 L/kg

Average Threshold for Average Threshold for

concentration toxicity concentration toxicity

2.85 2.4 10.9 9.1

 Activity
You are the superintendent of the granular filtration water treatment plant for the city of
Gringa. Your job is to prevent viruses, bacteria and protozoa from exiting your medium-sand
filtration unit (diameter = 2.73 m) at disease-causing levels (1 organism/mL). The source
concentrations for all three pathogen types is 1.0E9/mL.
For each one of the three types of organisms that could be present in drinking water, how
deep (transport distance) does your filter need to be to protect the population if the plant is
processing 10 m3/day? Assume the organism sizes given in the Filtration Theory activity.
It is expected that the population of Gringa increases over the next decades creating
higher demand on water supplied by the treatment plant (to 100 and 1000 m3/day in the
next 10 and 20 years, respectively). How much do you have to increase the length of the
filter in order to prevent disease outbreak in the next decade? Are the new lengths of the
filter realistic ones?
You realize that another way to deal with the increased water flow is changing your filter
material, so you decided to replace the medium-grained sand you currently have with
another porous media. Your choices are: a) silt (porosity = 30%, grain size = 0.01 mm), b)
fine sand (porosity = 30%, grain size = 0.1 mm), c) gravel (porosity = 30%, grain size = 10
mm). Designing this for 100 years from now which material would you choose and what
would be the filter length?

Consider the aquifer characteristics in the Filtration Theory activity.

HINT: for matching conditions use the eta (total) values calculated previously in the Filtration Theory activity
Solution
1.00E+00
10 m3/yr med sand
1.00E-01

1.00E-02

1.00E-03

1.00E-04
C/Co

1.00E-05
Virus
1.00E-06
Bacteria
1.00E-07
Protozoa
1.00E-08

1.00E-09
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4
filter length (m)
Solution
1.00E+00
bacteria med sand
1.00E-01
1.00E-02
1.00E-03
1.00E-04
C/Co

1.00E-05
100 m3/yr
1.00E-06
10 m3/yr
1.00E-07
1000 m3/yr
1.00E-08
1.00E-09
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
filter length (m)
Solution
1.00E+00

1.00E-01 bacteria 1000 m3/yr

1.00E-02

1.00E-03

1.00E-04
C/Co

med sand
1.00E-05 silt
1.00E-06 fine sand
"gravel"
1.00E-07

1.00E-08

1.00E-09
0 5 10 15 20
filter length (m)
Solution
1.00E+00

1.00E-01 bacteria 1000 m3/yr

1.00E-02

1.00E-03

1.00E-04
med sand
C/Co

1.00E-05 silt
fine sand
1.00E-06
"gravel"
1.00E-07

1.00E-08

1.00E-09
0.0000001 0.00001 0.001 0.1 10 1000
filter length (m)
 Solution
Collector Filter
Density Size Flow Velocity kf
Scenario Organism Porosity Grain diameter total length
(kg/m) (m) (m/year) (m/s) (1/s)
(mm) (m)

medium
1 1050 0.05 Virus 0.3 0.5 10 1.97E-05 0.15474 8.150E-03 0.050
sand
medium
2 1050 1.0 Bacteria 0.3 0.5 10 1.97E-05 0.02259 1.190E-03 0.344
sand
medium
3 1050 10.0 Protozoa 0.3 0.5 10 1.97E-05 0.13936 7.340E-03 0.056
sand
medium
4 1050 1.0 Bacteria 0.3 0.5 100 1.97E-04 0.00496 2.612E-03 1.568
sand
medium
5 1050 1.0 Bacteria 0.3 0.5 1000 1.97E-03 0.00123 6.453E-03 6.349
sand
6 1050 1.0 Bacteria 0.3 silt 0.01 1000 1.97E-03 0.37484 9.871E+01 4.15E-04
fine
7 1050 1.0 Bacteria 0.3 0.1 1000 1.97E-03 0.00770 2.028E-01 0.202
sand
8 1050 1.0 Bacteria 0.3 gravel 10 1000 1.97E-03 0.00015 3.956E-05 1035.51