The reactive mixing between seawater and terrestrial water in coastal aquifers influences the water quality of submarine groundwater discharge. While these waters come into contact at the seawater groundwater interface by density driven flow, their chemical components dilute and react through dispersion. A larger interface and wider mixing zone may provide favorable conditions for the natural attenuation of contaminant plumes. It has been claimed that the extent of this mixing is controlled by both, porous media properties and flow conditions. In this study, the interplay between dispersion and reactive processes in coastal aquifers is investigated by means of numerical experiments. Particularly, the impact of dispersion coefficients, the velocity field induced by density driven flow and chemical component reactivities on reactive transport in such aquifers is studied. To do this, a hybrid finite-element finite-volume method and a reactive simulator are coupled, and model accuracy and applicability are assessed. A simple redox reaction is considered to describe the degradation of a contaminant which requires mixing of the contaminated groundwater and the seawater containing the terminal electron acceptor. The resulting degradation is observed for different scenarios considering different magnitudes of dispersion and chemical reactivity. Three reactive transport regimes are found: reaction controlled, reaction-dispersion controlled and dispersion controlled. Computational results suggest that the chemical components' reactivity as well as dispersion coefficients play a significant role on controlling reactive mixing zones and extent of contaminant removal in coastal aquifers. Further, our results confirm that the dilution index is a better alternative to the second central spatial moment of a plume to describe the mixing of reactive solutes in coastal aquifers.@en

Groundwater microorganisms hardly ever cover the solid matrix uniformly–instead they form micro-scale colonies. To which extent such colony formation limits the bioavailability and biodegradation of a substrate is poorly understood. We used a high-resolution numerical model of a single pore channel inhabited by bacterial colonies to simulate the transport and biodegradation of organic substrates. These high-resolution 2D simulation results were compared to 1D simulations that were based on effective rate laws for bioavailability-limited biodegradation. We (i) quantified the observed bioavailability limitations and (ii) evaluated the applicability of previously established effective rate concepts if microorganisms are heterogeneously distributed. Effective bioavailability reductions of up to more than one order of magnitude were observed, showing that the micro-scale aggregation of bacterial cells into colonies can severely restrict the bioavailability of a substrate and reduce in situ degradation rates. Effective rate laws proved applicable for upscaling when using the introduced effective colony sizes.@en