Determination of hydraulic conductivity from grain-size distribution for different depositional environments.

Over 400 unlithified sediment samples were collected from four different depositional environments in global locations and the grain-size distribution, porosity, and hydraulic conductivity were measured using standard methods. The measured hydraulic conductivity values were then compared to values calculated using 20 different empirical equations (e.g., Hazen, Carman-Kozeny) commonly used to estimate hydraulic conductivity from grain-size distribution. It was found that most of the hydraulic conductivity values estimated from the empirical equations correlated very poorly to the measured hydraulic conductivity values with errors ranging to over 500%. To improve the empirical estimation methodology, the samples were grouped by depositional environment and subdivided into subgroups based on lithology and mud percentage. The empirical methods were then analyzed to assess which methods best estimated the measured values. Modifications of the empirical equations, including changes to special coefficients and addition of offsets, were made to produce modified equations that considerably improve the hydraulic conductivity estimates from grain size data for beach, dune, offshore marine, and river sediments. Estimated hydraulic conductivity errors were reduced to 6 to 7.1 m/day for the beach subgroups, 3.4 to 7.1 m/day for dune subgroups, and 2.2 to 11 m/day for offshore sediments subgroups. Improvements were made for river environments, but still produced high errors between 13 and 23 m/day.

Impact of edible oil injection on the permeability of aquifer sands.

Recent laboratory and field studies have shown that food-grade edible oils can be injected into the subsurface for installation of in-situ permeable reactive barriers. However to be effective, the oil must be distributed out away from the oil injection points without excessive permeability loss. In this work, we examine the distribution of soybean oil in representative aquifer sediments as non-aqueous phase liquid oil (NAPL oil) or as an oil-in-water emulsion. Laboratory columns packed with sands or clayey sands were flushed with either NAPL oil or a soybean emulsion followed by plain water, while monitoring permeability loss and the final oil residual saturation. NAPL oil can be injected into coarse-grained sands. However NAPL injection into finer grained sediments requires high injection pressures which may not be feasible at some sites. In addition, NAPL injection results in high oil residual saturations and moderate permeability losses. In contrast, properly prepared emulsions can be distributed through sands with varying clay content without excessive pressure buildup, low oil retention and very low to moderate permeability loss. For effective transport, the emulsion must be stable, the oil droplets must be significantly smaller than the mean pore size of the sediment and the oil droplets should have a low to moderate tendency to stick to each other and the aquifer sediments. In our work, oil retention and associated permeability loss increased with sediment clay content and with the ratio of droplet size to pore size. For sandy sediments, the permeability loss is modest (0-40% loss) and is proportional to the oil residual saturation.