High Spatial and Temporal Resolution Using Flexible Liners

Spatial resolution of water quality and formation hydraulic conductivity are important to contaminant plume assessment, contaminant transport, drinking water supply well design, mining and hydrocarbon extraction, and numerical models of those situations.   Flexible Liner Underground Technologies, FLUTe, has developed a variety of unique and well tested methods for mapping contaminant distribution and flow path characterization in geologic formations.  Blank liners are used to quickly and completely seal boreholes, preventing the confusing spread of contamination.  The blank liner installation procedure is also used to obtain a continuous map of the transmissivity distribution of the geologic formation intersected by the borehole (FLUTe T/K Profile).  Liners with a reactive cover are used to map in two dimensions the spatial DNAPL pure product distribution (NAPL FLUTe).  An activated carbon felt strip can be incorporated with the NAPL FLUTe cover to obtain a replica of the contaminant dissolved phase distribution in the pore space or fractures of the formation (FACT).  Multi level sampling liners (Water FLUTes) can obtain depth discrete water quality samples and head distributions in sealed holes.  A new technique (FLUTe RHP, for Reverse Head Profile) uses the blank liner stepwise removal to map the formation head distribution after the continuous transmissivity distribution was measured during the blank liner installation.  A new air coupled transducer technique (ACT) can dramatically reduce the lifetime cost of continuous multi-level transducer measurements of formation head histories by locating the recording transducers in the surface casing for reuse, repair or recalibration.  These liner methods are used in vertical, angled, and horizontal holes in karst and fractured rock.  This paper briefly describes how these several measurements are performed, how the data are reduced to hydro-geologic properties, and examples of the results.