Environmental media Materials (such as water, sand, clay, air) that constitute (are contained within) transport pathways. GoldSim provides two types of elements for defining media: Fluids and Solids. (such as water, air, and soil) are the basic "building blocks" of transport pathways. For each pathway in GoldSim, you must define the environmental media which are contained in the pathway, and mass transport calculations are based, to a large extent, on the properties of these media.
There are two types of environmental media in GoldSim: Fluids and Solids. The kinds of media represented by these two types are self-evident: Fluids are used to represent media such as water, air, oil and blood; Solids are used to represent media such as soil, rock, sediment and muscle tissue.
One of the key property sets for an environmental medium is the set of partition coefficients for the various species The chemical (or non-chemical, such as bacterial or viral) constituents that are stored and transported through an environmental system in a contaminant transport model. In GoldSim, the Species element defines all of the contaminant species being simulated (and their properties). with respect to that medium. A partition coefficient quantifies the degree to which a species partitions between media, and is expressed as the ratio of the concentration in one medium to the concentration in another medium (at equilibrium). In GoldSim, all partition coefficients The ratio of the species’ concentration in a medium to its concentration in the Reference Fluid at equilibrium. Partition coefficients are inputs to Solid and Fluid elements. must be expressed relative to the Reference Fluid A special type of Fluid element that provides a basis for defining partition coefficients between media for the various species in the model (i.e., the ratio of the species’ concentration in the medium to its concentration in the Reference Fluid at equilibrium).. In most cases, the Reference Fluid will be water.