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Optimal Pulsed Pumping For Remediation Of Aquifers When Sorption Is Rate-Limited, Lawrence J. Schmitt

Theses and Dissertations

A variational optimization technique is developed to acquire an optimal schedule of pulsed pumping operations for use at existing pump-and-treat aquifer remediation sites. The optimization problem is stated as a minimization of a generic management objective functional, constrained by the contaminant transport equations in two-dimensional or three-dimensional flow models which account for rate-limited sorption. The two-dimensional case is fully developed and a first-order rate equation is used to describe the transport of sorbing contaminant. The first variation provides necessary optimality conditions that must be met by any optimal solution, in turn leading to a pulsed pumping schedule of operation. The …