Modeling sediment and water column interactions for hydrophobic pollutants. Parameter discrimination and model response to input uncertainty

An analysis of the response of a model of hydrophobic pollutants in sedimentation ponds is presented. A Latin hypercube sampling scheme for model response analysis simultaneously to nine model parameters was used. The analyses of the ranked model output vs the ranked input values were done and the partial rank correlation coefficients estimated. These results show that it is important to have accurate estimates of the partition and reaction rate coefficients, while for other physical parameters that are required for the simulation, literature estimates are satisfactory. It is also shown that the interactions between the fractions of pollutant in the water column and in the bottom sediments are only significant for compounds with high partition coefficients.