Mathematical Modelling of Underground Water Contamination
Loading...
Date
2024-04
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Kenyatta University
Abstract
Groundwater pollution is a major cause of many health hazards in our society. The
pollution comes as a result of human indifference to waste disposal, industrial
effluents, chemical spills etc. One major contaminant of underground water is
nitrogen; which stems from excessive application of nitrogen-containing fertilisers,
chemical spillage, etc. Its transport as it percolates through the porous media of
ground surface layer to the underground water can be modelled mathematically by
the advection-diffusion equation; advection (transport of contaminants by a bulk of
the fluid parcel) and diffusion (random movement of the solutes i.e. contaminants,
during transport). A linear model that incorporates both source and sinks is
formulated and then non-dimensionalised by introducing suitable dimensionless
variables and parameters. A finite difference scheme is developed for the problem
using the Crank-Nilcoson scheme. The resulting algebraic equations are solved
simultaneously at each time step to unravel the effect of the parameters on the
concentration of nitrogen at each soil layer. The findings show that raising diffusion
increases in concentration of nitrogen but increase in Peclet number leads to
decreases in the concentration.
Description
A Research Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Award of the Degree of Masters of Science (Applied Mathematics) in the School of Pure And Applied Sciences of Kenyatta University, April 2024.
Supervisor
Isaac Chepkwony