Joint 55th Annual North-Central / 55th Annual South-Central Section Meeting - 2021

Paper No. 7-11
Presentation Time: 11:35 AM

ASSESSING THE FEASIBILITY OF A NOVEL GROUNDWATER TRACER, SODIUM 2-NAPHTHALENE SULFONATE, FOR ESTIMATING THE TOTAL FRACTION OF ORGANIC CARBON IN NATIVE SEDIMENTS


HATAMI, Jiyan1, BENKO, Anna M.2, JOHNSON, Raymond1, CONROY, Nathan A.3, REIMUS, Paul W.4, GRUNDL, Tim5, SCHMIDT, Adam6, MEURER, Cullen1, SULIKOWSKI, Gabrielle6 and PARADIS, Charles1, (1)Department of Geosciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53211, (2)Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 51322, (3)Earth and Environmental Sciences, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, (4)Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, (5)Univ Wisconsin-Milwaukee Dept Geosciences, 3209 N Maryland Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53211-3102, (6)Geosciences Department, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53211

Characterizing the fraction of organic carbon (fOC) within an aquifer is an important component in developing an accurate conceptual model of contaminant fate and transport. Uranium is among the wide range of contaminants that are known to adsorb to organic carbon (OC), thus delaying its transport downgradient. While there are currently no widely used groundwater tracers for estimating the fOC, preliminary data from both field scale tracer tests and batch microcosm experiments suggest that sodium 2-naphthalene sulfonate (2-NS) might adsorb to OC in the aquifer matrix, possibly providing a method to estimate the total fOC. 2-NS is widely understood to adsorb to granular activated carbon (GAC), but there is little to no information on 2-NS adsorbing to OC in the literature. Experimental data from both the field and the lab will be presented to characterize the sorption and desorption behavior of 2-NS to native sediments with varying fOC. It is hypothesized that the transport behavior of 2-NS as a reactive groundwater tracer can yield important information on the presence, magnitude, and distribution of OC in aquifers.