Journal of Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers ISSN:1738-3692(Print) 2093-7709(Online) 한국농공학회논문집

In unsaturated porous media, the air-water interface (AWI) plays an important role in removing of biocolloids such as bacteria, viruses, and protozoan (oo)cysts. In this study, four models related to calculation of specific AWI area are analyzed to determine the appropriate model, and the selected models are verified using the previously reported experimental data. The results indicate that the modified model from Niemet et al. (2002) is the most appropriate tool for calculating the specific AWI area using the van Genuchten (1980) parameters obtained from the water retention curve. Hence, it is expected that this model could be used to quantitatively determine the attachment of biocolloids to AWI in the transport modeling of biocolloids in unsaturated porous media.