Modelling Well Location Between River and Second Contaminant Source in Riverbank Filtration Systems

Abstract

Extracting water from pumping well near to river in riverbank filtration systems leads to the natural treatment for surface water. To increase the system efficiency, the well should be located at a distance from the river in which the well can produce high percentage of river water that satisfies the requirements of water quality. In case the well is located between river and a contaminant source, its location should be relocated to a suitable place between the two sources. In this article, an analytical solution is produced to specify the suitable distance of pumping well and polluted river in a riverbank filtration systems if there is a contaminant source to the present well. The analytical solution is obtained by using Green’s function. This approach is chosen because of its simplicity for solving multidimensional problems, and its flexibility to deal with arbitrary initial and boundary conditions. The model is compared with numerical one obtained by using MODFLOW software. The results indicate that the location obtained from proposed model is suitable for use to determine the well location. Additionally, the results show that increasing either the pumping rate or initial contaminant concentration leads to an increment to the distance between river well.