Permeable Reactive Barriers (Proceedings of the International Symposium held at Belfast, Northern Ireland, March 2004). IAHS Publ. 298, 2005, 125-135.

Abstract A synthetic modelling study was carried out to investigate performance differences between single and multi-gate funnel-and-gate systems (FGS) in 10 different anisotropic, heterogeneous aquifers. A FGS design model was used to obtain nine different FGS designs which are hydraulically equivalent based on a homogeneous aquifer. By means of a geostatistical description of anisotropy and heterogeneity of hydraulic conductivity, Monte-Carlo analyses were performed to obtain capture zone reliability curves and total gate flux distributions for the individual designs and aquifer scenarios. In combination with a simple cost model, reliability–cost plots were generated to evaluate design performance for both objectives. The results showed that depending on the actual distance upgradient of the FGS, multi-gate designs may capture a certain plume width more reliably than single gate designs. In terms of cost, the variance of the hydraulic conductivity field seems to have decisive influence concerning the cost-efficiency of multi-gate designs.

Key words aquifer heterogeneity; anisotropy; costs; design-reliability; funnel-and-gate system