Aqueous Geochemistry

Knowledge: Attendants will acquire knowledge on:

• Major chemistry of water, water quality, and analysis accuracy. 
• The relation between aqueous inorganic geochemistry, sediment mineralogy, and water movement/hydrogeology that control geochemical processes/water-rock interaction (mineral/gas dissolution and precipitation/degassing, saturation state and partial gas pressures, ion exchange, surface complexation, redox reactions). 
• Diffusion and dispersion in relation to aqueous inorganic geochemistry. 
• Chemical speciation in water, batch and 1D reactive transport modeling with PHREEQC (a free, generic aqueous geochemistry code).

Skills: Attendants will acquire skills to:

• Assess quality of water and water analyses; write and make use of geochemical reaction equations for various water-rock interactions, and equations for diffusion/dispersion;
• Assess controlling geochemical processes based on water analyses, sediment mineralogy, and hydrogeology;
• Conduct chemical speciation, batch and 1D reactive transport modeling with PHREEQC.
• Calculate contaminant retardation and derive contaminant travel times and spreading.

Competences: Competences acquired:

• Break-down data sets of water analyses, sediment mineralogy and hydrology to evaluate qualitatively and quantitatively the geochemical and physical/hydrogeological processes controlling element fluxes and aqueous geochemistry of the hydrosphere, including groundwater chemistry and drinking water quality.
• Combine and reformulate general geochemical reaction equations for aqueous and solid-aqueous processes into problem-specific reaction equations which clearly express the nature of the problem at hand.
• To formulate and test hypotheses, and make predictions, regarding groundwater geochemistry by conducting numerical speciation, batch and reactive transport (flow or diffusion) modeling.