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Passive Flux Meter Measurement of Water and Nutrient Flux in Saturated Porous Media: Bench‐Scale Laboratory Tests
Author(s) -
Cho Jaehyun,
Annable Michael D.,
Jawitz James W.,
Hatfield Kirk
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of environmental quality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.888
H-Index - 171
eISSN - 1537-2537
pISSN - 0047-2425
DOI - 10.2134/jeq2006.0370
Subject(s) - sorbent , flux (metallurgy) , nutrient , phosphate , sorption , environmental science , volume (thermodynamics) , porosity , chemistry , environmental chemistry , adsorption , physics , organic chemistry , quantum mechanics
The passive nutrient flux meter (PNFM) is introduced for simultaneous measurement of both water and nutrient flux through saturated porous media. The PNFM comprises a porous sorbent pre‐equilibrated with a suite of alcohol tracers, which have different partitioning coefficients. Water flux was estimated based on the loss of loaded resident tracers during deployment, while nutrient flux was quantified based on the nutrient solute mass captured on the sorbent. An anionic resin, Lewatit 6328 A, was used as a permeable sorbent and phosphate (PO 4 3− ) was the nutrient studied. The phosphate sorption capacity of the resin was measured in batch equilibration tests as 56 mg PO 4 3− g −1 , which was determined to be adequate capacity to retain PO 4 3− loads intercepted over typical PNFM deployment periods in most natural systems. The PNFM design was validated with bench‐scale laboratory tests for a range of 9.8 to 28.3 cm d −1 Darcy velocities and 6 to 43 h deployment durations. Nutrient and water fluxes measured by the PNFM averaged within 6 and 12% of the applied values, respectively, indicating that the PNFM shows promise as a tool for simultaneous measurement of water and nutrient fluxes.