UC San Diego

We study transport of a reactive solute in a chemically heterogeneous porous medium whose chemical properties are uncertain. The dissolved substance undergoes a heterogeneous chemical reaction with a solid phase in the presence of advection caused by extraction/injection from a point source. We present semi-analytical solutions for the probability density function of the solute concentration, which allows us to quantify predictive uncertainty associated with uncertain reaction rate constants for both linear and nonlinear reactions. This enables one to compute probabilities of rare events, which are required for quantitative risk analyses.