Contaminant transport refers to the physical and chemical processes governing the movement and fate of pollutants within environmental media such as groundwater, surface water, soil, and the atmosphere. It encompasses advection, dispersion, diffusion, sorption, volatilization, degradation, and transformation reactions that control contaminant distributions and concentrations over space and time. In research, contaminant transport is described by coupled partial differential equations derived from mass conservation, often incorporating multiphase flow, reactive transport, heterogeneity, and scale-dependent parameters. Accurate characterization and modeling of contaminant transport are critical for risk assessment, remediation design, and prediction of long-term contaminant plume evolution in engineered and natural systems.
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