Transport of gas components across the soil – atmosphere interface influenced by wind conditions: A study with laboratory experiments and coupled subsurface – free flow modelling

Transport of gas components in the unsaturated zone and across the soil surface plays a role for transport of volatile contaminants, gases from pipe leaks or greenhouse gases. When estimating flow rates from the soil into the atmosphere, a good understanding of the transport processes is important. In general, component transport in the gas phase is considered to be mainly due to diffusion. However, the wind field above the soil surface can induce flow into the subsurface and influence transport and mass fluxes.

We present a study on gas component transport through dry and partially saturated soil into a free air flow above the soil surface, considering gas components of different density. Laboratory experiments in a quasi-2d sand tank were carried out. The tank was placed underneath a wind tunnel, and different wind velocities were used. Gases with different densities were injected with constant rate at an inlet port. Concentration distributions were measured continuously with sensors that were installed inside of the tank. After establishing a steady state concentration distribution, the gas injection was stopped and the decrease of gas concentrations inside the tank was monitored.

The experiments show that the concentration profiles under steady state gas injection depend on gas density and the different diffusion coefficients. They depend only slightly on the velocity of the overlaying wind field and the influence is mainly seen very close to the soil surface. The transient gas transport out of the soil, however, did not only depend on the different diffusion coefficients, but was clearly influenced by the wind field. The transient 2d concentration distribution fields illustrate that the wind field induced a flow field inside the tank that depends on the wind velocity and the component density and influences the gas component transport. The influence increases under partly saturated conditions.

To reproduce the transport correctly, it is necessary to capture the coupling between free flow and porous medium flow and the transport in the coupled flow. To do so, we use a fully coupled flow and transport model implemented into the environment DuMu^x ((Dune for Multi-(Phase,Component, Scale, ...) flow and transport in porous media). It can be shown that including the coupling concept, the main features of the concentration distributions can be reproduced for both the steady state and the transient case. With the model it is also demonstrated, that although advective fluxes inside the porous medium introduced by the wind field (horizontal and lateral) are relatively small in comparison to the diffusive fluxes, they cause relevant changes in the concentration distribution and thus indirectly influence the mass fluxes inside the porous medium and across the soil-atmosphere interface.