A two-dimensional analytical model for heavy metal contaminants transport in permeable reactive barrier.

Permeable reactive barrier (PRB) remediation technology has been widely used in the remediation of groundwater contamination. In numerical simulations, neglecting the non-uniform distribution of heavy metal contamination along the depth may lead to deviations between simulation results and reality. The distribution of heavy metals in the soil layer around a non-ferrous mining area in Hezhou, Guangxi, southern China was investigated, and it was found that the standard Gaussian function could well describe the non-uniform distribution of heavy metals in the soil layer.