Irrazábal, Maik

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    Modeling of TNT transport from landmines
    (2008) Irrazábal, Maik; Briano, Julio G.; College of Engineering; Benítez Rodríguez, Jaime; Cardona Martínez, Nelson; Castro Rosario, Miguel; Department of Chemical Engineering; Mina, Nairmen
    The transport of Explosive Related Compounds (ERCs) has been studied as part of a research program aiming to the development of chemical sensors for detecting landmines. TNT and its degradation products typically make up the explosive charge in buried mines. The spatial and temporal distribution of concentrations of ERCs depends primarily on the mobility of the water phase. The fate and transport of TNT released from a landmine will somewhat determine the location of the maximum concentration of chemicals at the surface. Chemical detection on the other hand will specify such spatial location but the actual position of the land mines not necessarily will lie under such point. This assumption seems logical but has not been shown previously. In the first part of this work we developed 3D numerical simulations (using LaGriT and FEHM codes from Los Alamos National Laboratories) of the fate and transport of TNT released from a landmine subjected to environmental factors (such as rain precipitation, sun radiation, etc.) to serve as an example for this problem. The second part of this work is focused on the study of the environmental effects on the fate and transport of the chemical signature of TNT in soil. Experimental data were used for validating the numerical technique. Finally, an analytical approach to describe the fate and transport of TNT in soil was developed. This approach can be useful for experimental work, in particular for obtaining realistic physicochemical parameters of explosives. The model is based on the conservation equations applied to the vadose zone and predicts the concentration profiles of water and TNT as a function of time. Results of this analytical model are in close agreement with experiments and numerical simulations.