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Engineering

Taste of Research Summer Scholarship Program

Solute Transport In Rocks: From nm To cm


Hoang Pham
Supervisor: Dr Peyman Mostaghimi

Background and Motivation Aim and Objective


• Understanding solute transport in porous media is very important in the design of remediation schemes for • To develop a model that can take microporosity into consideration in simulating
contaminated groundwater, radioactive waste disposal and tracer studies in oil recovery. flow and transport of solute particles in a porous medium.
• Microporosity is an important property to consider in porous medium, as it affects the dispersion coefficient while • To determine the significance of microporosity on the longitudinal dispersion
commonly ignored in simulations. coefficient in porous medium.

Method Sand pack geometry Microporosity Model Validation


1. Obtaining geometry of the porous medium. If a particle, during its random jump, hits a • The algorithm is validated by simulating dispersion in a
solid surface. Most of the time, the particle will single capillary with a square cross-section, then the result
2. Determining the velocity field of the porous medium. bounce back into the pore space, but there is is compared with the published literature.
a small chance that the particle will move • These studies state that the longitudinal dispersion
3. Injecting particles into the pore space of the sample inside the microporosity. coefficient (DL/Dm) in a single capillary is proportional to the
(approximately 10,000 particles). Once the particle is inside the microporosity, square of the Peclet Number (Pe2):
the particle will only move by diffusion, until it 𝐷𝐷𝐿𝐿 2
1
= 𝑘𝑘𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃 , 𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤𝑤, = 30.4 ± 2.6
4. In each time step, move particles by advection based jumps out to the pore space. 𝐷𝐷𝑚𝑚 𝑘𝑘
streamlines, and diffusion using the random-walk method Carbonate geometry

5. Estimating the longitudinal dispersion coefficient by A particle A particle

DL / Dm
calculating the variance of the distance travelled by bounces moves 𝐷𝐷𝐿𝐿
particles in the main direction of flow. back into inside the = 0.031 𝑃𝑃𝑃𝑃 2
𝐷𝐷𝑚𝑚
the pore micro-
6. Repeat from step 3, with different Peclet numbers, by space porosity Pe2
Cross-Section
varying flow rate and dispersion coefficient. Velocity Field Fig. 1: Validation Result (𝑘𝑘 = 0.031)

Result: Nominal Mean Displacement (at Peclet number Pe = 100) Result: Dispersion Coefficient
Sand pack Carbonate Sand pack
Without Microporosity With Microporosity Without Microporosity With Microporosity
Reduced Dispersion Coefficient
Probability of particle
displacements

t = 0.2s t = 1s
Probability of particle
displacements

t = 0.5s t = 2s
Péclet Number

Carbonate
Reduced Dispersion Coefficient
Probability of particle
displacements

t = 1s t = 5s
Probability of particle
displacements

t = 2s t = 10s
Péclet Number

The results show that the reduced dispersion coefficient


of microporosity model is higher in previous models.
This indicates that microporosity increases the
longitudinal dispersion of particles and can have a major
Nominal Mean Displacement Nominal Mean Displacement Nominal Mean Displacement Nominal Mean Displacement impact of transport especially in high Peclet numbers.

Conclusion and Future Research Acknowledgements


• We have developed a novel model for the advection and diffusion movements of particles. Unlike previous models, our model takes The author gratefully acknowledges the great support of Dr
microporosity into consideration. Peyman Mostaghimi and Mr Traiwit Chung in the development
• The significance of microporosity increases as Peclet number increases. The longitudinal dispersion coefficient is increased by an of this project.
approximate power-law of Peclet number. Therefore, the inclusion of microporosity in the evaluation of transport, especially for high Reference
Peclet number is recommended.
• In the future, we will expand the quantification of microporosity in other types of rocks, show the effects of inclusion of microporosity Mostaghimi, et al. (2012). Simulation of Flow and Dispersion
in reservoirs, and prepare a correction factor for advection diffusion equation to use in the industry. on Pore-Space Images. SPE Journal, 17(04), pp.1131-1141.

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