Breaking New Ground for Clean Water:
ORNL's past, present, and future

The Problem: Groundwater, the potable water supply for over half of the U.S. population, is increasingly threatened by organic, inorganic and radioactive pollutants. Given the complexity and the inherent uncertainty of the subsurface, the need for research addressing subsurface characterization, transport, and remediation cannot be over emphasized.
ORNL has been in a unique position to conduct this research because of the scientific expertise, the availability of experimental and computational resources, and the complex nature of the subsurface environment at the Oak Ridge Reservation.
ORNL Solutions:

ORNL has developed a number of tools and techniques for testing and simulating subsurface processes.
Check it out:

1986-1989: WAG (Waste area grouping) experiments, new tracer techniques, 3D FEMWATER, FEMAIR
1990: Pedon scale experiments, LEWASTE
1992: P-LEWASTE
1993: Partnership in Computational Science (PICS) project, PFEM
1994: PICS GCT 1.0, MURF/MURT
1995: PICS GCT 1.2, EYE, PGREM3D, DONIO
1996: 1.2 million node simulation of a Savannah River Site using GCT 1.2, G3D, 10 million cells used in PGREM3D pump-and-treat simulation
1997: computational steering, ETPI project for hydrobiogeochemistry (HBGC) code development, PGREM3D used for TCE leaching at Portsmouth, parallel hydrogeochemistry code used to simulate Melton Branch site
1998: NABIR project to study scale-dependent mass-transfer processes in porous media, genetic search algorithms used for subsurface microbial zones and subsurface fracture networks, 120 million degrees of freedom nonlinear multicomponent transport in less than 10 seconds per timestep on Paragon, HBGC simulation of copper leaching
Future: coupled multi-scale biohydrogeochemical transport, experiments addressing effects of soil/rock structures on biogeochemically enhanced transport and mass-transfer

v3-10/29/98
URL http://www.csm.ornl.gov/SC98/car.html
Betsy A. Riley -- email: rileyba@ornl.gov