A Numerical Method of Moments for Solute Transport in Nonstationary Flow Fields

A Lagrangian perturbation approach has been applied to develop the method of moments for predicting mean and variance of solute flux through a three-dimensional nonstationary flow field. The flow nonstationarity may stem from medium nonstationarity, finite domain boundaries, and/or fluid pumping and injecting. The solute flux is described as a space–time process where time refers to the solute flux breakthrough and space refers to the transverse displacement distribution at the control plane. The analytically derived moment equations for solute transport in a nonstationary flow field are too complicated to solve analytically, a numerical finite difference method is implemented to obtain the solutions. This approach combines the stochastic model with the flexibility of the numerical method to boundary and initial conditions. This method is also compared with the numerical Monte Carlo method. The calculation results indicate the two methods match very well when the variance of log-conductivity is small, but the method of moment is more efficient in computation.