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Mineral dissolution kinetics at the pore scale (open access)

Mineral dissolution kinetics at the pore scale

Mineral dissolution rates in the field have been reported to be orders of magnitude slower than those measured in the laboratory, an unresolved discrepancy that severely limits our ability to develop scientifically defensible predictive or even interpretive models for many geochemical processes in the earth and environmental sciences. One suggestion links this discrepancy to the role of physical and chemical heterogeneities typically found in subsurface soils and aquifers in producing scale-dependent rates where concentration gradients develop. In this paper, we examine the possibility that scale-dependent mineral dissolution rates can develop even at the single pore and fracture scale, the smallest and most fundamental building block of porous media. To do so, we develop two models to analyze mineral dissolution kinetics at the single pore scale: (1) a Poiseuille Flow model that applies laboratory-measured dissolution kinetics at the pore or fracture wall and couples this to a rigorous treatment of both advective and diffusive transport, and (2) a Well-Mixed Reactor model that assumes complete mixing within the pore, while maintaining the same reactive surface area, average flow rate, and geometry as the Poiseuille Flow model. For a fracture, a 1D Plug Flow Reactor model is considered in addition to quantify the …
Date: May 24, 2007
Creator: Li, L.; Steefel, C.I. & Yang, L.
System: The UNT Digital Library