Field Demonstration and Validation of a New Device for Measuring Water and Solute Fluxes NASA LC-34 SITE

Prepared in cooperation with Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. The original document contains color images.

The use of contaminant flux and contaminant mass discharge as robust metrics for assessment of risks at contaminated sites and for evaluating the performance of site remediation efforts has gained increasing acceptance within the scientific, regulatory and user communities. The Passive Flux Meter (PFM) is a new technology that directly addresses the DoD need for cost-effective long-term monitoring, because flux measurements can be used for process control, for remedial action performance assessments, and for compliance purposes. However, the use of innovative technologies such as the PFM can be slow to gain acceptance in the environmental community. Thus, to gain acceptance it must be shown that the PFM technology possesses a sound theoretical basis accepted widely in the technical circles and that it be field-scale demonstrated at diverse sites. Under ESTCP project No ER-0114, the PFM is demonstrated and validated at several locations including Hill AFB in Layton, Utah; NASA Launch Complex 34 in Cape Canaveral, Florida; a Canadian Forces Base in Ontario, Canada; Naval Base Construction Base in Port Hueneme, California; and the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Indian head, Maryland. The projects at Hill, NASA, and Borden include the objectives of evaluating the flux meter as an innovative technology for direct in situ measurement of cumulative water and contaminant flux for DNAPLs and compiling field data to transition the technology from the innovative testing phase to regulatory/end user acceptance and stimulated commercialization. The Port Hueneme project evaluated MTBE flux with similar objectives while the Indian Head project demonstrated the borehole flux meter to measure water and perchlorate contaminant flux.