Estimating diffusion coefficients in low-permeability porous media using a macropore column

Diffusion coefficients in an aquitard material were measured by conducting miscible solute transport experiments through a specially constructed macropore column. Stainless steel HPLC columns were prepared in a manner that created an annular region of repacked aquitard material and a central core of medium-grained quartz sand. The column transport approach minimizes volatilization and sorption losses that can be problematic when measuring hydrophobic organic chemical diffusion with diffusion-cell methods or column-sectioning techniques. In the transport experiments, solutes (tritiated water, 1,2,4-trichlorobenzene, and tetrachloroethene) were transported through the central core by convection and hydrodynamic dispersion and through the low-permeability annulus by radial diffusion. All transport parameters were independently measured except for the effective diffusion coefficient in the aquitard material, which was obtained by model fitting. Batch-determined retardation factors agreed very closely with moment-derived retardation factors determined from the column experiments, and no evidence of pore exclusion was found. A model with retarded diffusion was found to apply, and the effective tortuosity factor of the aquitard material was estimated at an average value of 5.1 (based on estimates that ranged from 3.7 to 7.7).