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McKay, Donald. "Front matter" Multimedia Environmental Models ...

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A key concept in this discussion that was introduced earlier, and is variously<br />

termed persistence, lifetime, residence time, or detention time of the chemical.<br />

In a steady-state system, as shown in Figure 6.1a, if chemical is introduced at a<br />

rate of E mol/h, then the rate of removal must also be E mol/h. Otherwise, net<br />

accumulation or depletion will occur. If the amount in the system is M mol, then,<br />

on average, the amount of time each molecule spends in the steady-state system will<br />

be M/E hours. This time, t, is a residence time and is also called a detention time<br />

or persistence. Clearly, if a chemical persists longer, there will be more of it in the<br />

system. The key equation is<br />

©2001 CRC Press LLC<br />

t = M/E or M = t E<br />

This concept is routinely applied to retention time in lakes. If a lake has a volume<br />

of 100,000 m 3 , and if it receives an inflow of 1000 m 3 per day, then the retention<br />

time is 100,000/1000 or 100 days. A mean retention time of 100 days does not imply<br />

Figure 6.1 Diagram of a steady-state evaluative environment subject to (a) advective flow, (b)<br />

degrading reactions, (c) both, and (d) the time course to steady state.

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