Non-invasive in situ concentration determination of fluorescent or color tracers and pollutants in a glass pore network model.

This study presents a non-invasive imaging method for in situ concentration determination of conservative tracers and pollutants in a two-dimensional glass pore network model. The method presented is an extension to the work by Huang et al., and Thomas and Chysikopoulos. The method consists of fabricating the glass pore network model using a photolithography technique, conducting flowthrough contaminant transport experiments, taking digital photographs at various times of the two-dimensional pore network under ultraviolet or visible light source, and determining the spatially-distributed pollutant concentrations by measuring the color intensity in the photographs with comparative image analysis. Therefore, the method is limited to fluorescent or colored pollutants and tracers. The method was successfully employed to in situ concentration determination of uranine and red color tracers.