TRACER MAPPING OF FLOWPATHS

FLUTe liners seal the entire hole and are therefore especially well suited for injection and collection of tracers in boreholes. The Water FLUTe system has discrete sampling intervals with no hole storage volume outside of the sealing liner. By steadily pumping all ports simultaneously (as was done at Milford, NH at the OK Tool site), the sample stream can be monitored for the first arrivals and subsequent concentrations of tracers.

Tracers of different kinds can be injected at different levels via the same ports used for sampling. A separate injection tube can be run to each port so that the same liner can be used to extract sample fluids and inject tracer fluids. (It is necessary to bypass the valves of the sampling system for injection).

This use is equally practical for both water flows and vadose flows. In many cases, the Water FLUTe liners are also equipped with Vadose FLUTe sampling ports above the water table.

For this application, the Water FLUTe and Vadose FLUTe systems can be used in horizontal holes or leaking pipelines for leak detection.

Another very useful system for this application is the Progressive Packer method which uses a propagating open interval in a horizontal hole isolated by a coupled pair of advancing and retreating liners to support the hole and yet extract at any location in the hole. This system is especially well suited for leak detection in piping.

For more information on this technique, contact us at