Environmental Hydrogeology
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Drs.G.R.Sadeghi
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room W212
Environmental Hydrogeology Group
Department of Earth Sciences
Faculty of Geosciences
University of Utrecht
P.O. Box 80021
3508 TA UTRECHT
Phone (+31) 030 2535102
Email: sadeghi[AT]geo[DOT]uu[DOT]nl
Title of Project: Modelling geochemical effects on virus removal in sediments
Promotor / Director of Research: Prof. dr. ir. S.M. Hassanizadeh (UU)
Co-promotor / project leader: dr. J.F. Schijven (RIVM/UU)
Co-promotor: dr. T. Behrends (UU)
Research desription
Groundwater used for drinking water may be contaminated with pathogenic microorganisms, especially viruses, which may hamper drinking water production. In order to predict protection zones around abstraction wells to prevent contamination of groundwater from human and animal sources and thus to protect public health, data need to be collected and empirical relations need to be developed to be able to quantify the removal processes during subsurface transport. Removal processes (deposition and inactivation) largely determine the size of the required protection zones. Currently, using conservative estimates, protection zones of unconfined sandy aquifers were predicted to need residence times of one to two years instead of the legislatively required 60 days. However, to date, the uncertainties with respect to the extent of these removal processes are large and therefore protection zones cannot be estimated accurately, while enlargement of the protection zones has great consequences for spatial planning. To identify the origin of the uncertainties, the relation between the removal processes (deposition and inactivation) and the physical chemical conditions of the groundwater and sediments need to be quantified at different scales.
The PhD student will participate in the development of quantitative modelling tools for predicting transport of viruses through groundwater on the basis of the hydrochemical properties of the groundwater and the geochemical properties of the porous medium.
The nature of the research is a combination of experimental work and modelling. Column scale experiments under various geochemical conditions will primarily be conducted at Utrecht University, but when the comparison with waterborne pathogenic viruses and larger microorganisms come into play, such experiments will be conducted at RIVM.
The geochemical conditions at laboratory scale represent field conditions and are related to field scale research at RIVM for groundwater protection, wherein large volume samples of groundwater are investigated for the presence of pathogenic viruses and wherein tracking of viruses from a leaking sewer is conducted. The PhD student will also participate in those field studies. By literature research and predictive modelling he will support set-up and analysis of field work. Furthermore the student will assist in conducting microbiological analyses and also conduct modelling of the field microbiological data.
