Modern reactive transport modeling has arisen from several separate schools of thought. Hydrologists primarily concerned with the physical nature of mass transport assumed relatively simple reaction formulations, such as linear distribution coefficients or linear decay terms, which could be added to the advection-dispersion equation. By assuming linear, equilibrium sorption, for example, the advection-dispersion equation can be modified by a simple retardation factor and solved analytically. Such analytical solutions are limited to relatively simple flow systems and reactions.
Geochemical models, on the other hand, have been developed to provide thermodynamic descriptions of multicomponent systems without regard to transport. Reaction path models were created, for instance, to describe the sequence of chemical reactions resulting from chemical weathering or hydrothermal alteration in batch systems, in terms of the overall reaction progress. By adopting the reference frame of a packet of fluid and treating reaction progress as travel time (or distance along a flowpath), however, a batch reaction path model could be thought of as describing advective transport through an aquifer.
The most sophisticated multi-component reactive transport models consider both reaction and transport. Early studies developed the theoretical basis of reactive transport models, and the numerical tools necessary to solve them, and applied them to problems of reactive contaminant transport and flow through reacting hydrothermal systems.
Reactive transport models have found increased application in recent years with improvements in the power of personal computers and modeling software.