Rani, Payal (2017) Geophysical modeling for groundwater and soil contamination risk assessment. [Tesi di dottorato]

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Item Type:	Tesi di dottorato
Resource language:	English
Title:	Geophysical modeling for groundwater and soil contamination risk assessment
Creators:	Creators Email Rani, Payal payal.rani@unina.it
Date:	9 April 2017
Number of Pages:	175
Institution:	Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
Department:	Scienze della Terra, dell'Ambiente e delle Risorse
Dottorato:	Scienze della Terra, dell'ambiente e delle risorse
Ciclo di dottorato:	29
Coordinatore del Corso di dottorato:	nome email Fedi, Maurizio fedi@unina.it
Tutor:	nome email Di Maio, Rosa UNSPECIFIED Piegari, Ester UNSPECIFIED Soupios, Pantelis UNSPECIFIED
Date:	9 April 2017
Number of Pages:	175
Keywords:	Groundwater contamination, Geoelectrical methods, SP data inversion, Numerical modeling
Settori scientifico-disciplinari del MIUR:	Area 04 - Scienze della terra > GEO/11 - Geofisica applicata
Date Deposited:	06 May 2017 07:55
Last Modified:	14 Mar 2018 10:11
URI:	http://www.fedoa.unina.it/id/eprint/11708
DOI:	10.6093/UNINA/FEDOA/11708

Collection description

This PhD thesis is focused on the study of environmental problems linked to contaminant detection and transport in soil and groundwater. The research has two main objectives: development, testing and application of geophysical data inversion methods for identifying and characterizing possible anomaly sources of contamination and development and application of numerical models for simulating contaminant propagation in saturated and unsaturated conditions. Initially, three different approaches for self-potential (SP) data inversion, based on spectral, tomographical and global optimization methods, respectively, are proposed to characterize the SP anomalous sources and to study their time evolution. The developed approaches are first tested on synthetic SP data generated by simple polarized structures, (like sphere, vertical cylinder, horizontal cylinder and inclined sheet) and, then, applied to SP field data taken from literature. In particular, the comparison of the results with those coming from other numerical approaches strengthens their usefulness. As it concerns the modelling of groundwater flow and contaminant transport, two cellular automata (CA) models have been developed to simulate diffusion-dispersion processes in unsaturated and saturated conditions, respectively, and to delineate the most dangerous scenarios in terms of maximum distances travelled by the contaminant. The developed CA models have been applied to two study areas affected by a different phenomenon of contamination. The first area is located in the western basin of the Crete island (Greece), which is affected by organic contaminant due to olive oil mills wastes (OOMWs). The numerical simulations provided by the CA model predict contaminant infiltration in the saturated zone and such results are in very good agreement with the high phenol concentrations provided by geochemical analyses on soil samples collected in the survey area at different depths and times. The second case study refers to an area located in the western basin of Solofrana river valley (southern Italy), which is often affected by heavy flooding and contamination from agricultural and industrial activities in the surroundings. The application of a multidisciplinary approach, which integrates geophysical data with hydrogeological and geochemical studies, and the development of a CA model for contaminant propagation in saturated conditions, have permitted to identify a possible phenomenon of contamination and the delineation of the most dangerous scenarios in terms of infiltration rates are currently in progress.

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