Abstract: | A distributed-site non-aqueous phase liquid (NAPL) dissolution model that can capture the physical process of dissolution is presented. The model uses a Pareto distribution of effective interfacial area and a correlation for the mass transfer. Model parameters are obtained using a formal constrained non-linear optimisation technique. The model is applied on effluent data from two soil column experiments. The results of the Pareto distributed site model, with only two parameters to fit, were compared to two-site and multi-site models as well as the beta distributed site model. The Pareto distributed-site model produces equal or smaller error estimates than the other models. |