Speaker
Description
Understanding mineral reaction rates in porous material is crucial in many environmental systems such as natural weathering process, enhanced oil recovery, radioactive waste disposal etc. Prediction of in-situ mineral reaction rates is challenging, and a significant variation is observed between laboratory data compared to field data due to factors like variation in the physicochemical properties of minerals, spatial heterogeneities, chemical composition of the fluid, etc. Previous studies have suggested that this discrepancy is mostly due to the imprecision in determining the mineral reactive surface areas. Even in many cases, the evolution of surface areas of different mineral phases during the reaction gets ignored. Core flood experiments under acidic condition can provide information about the geochemical reactions, mineral dissolution-precipitation kinetics, and surface area evolution. In this study, a brine solution mixed with HCl is injected into a sandstone core sample from the Torrey Buff formation. 3D X-ray nano-computed tomography (X-ray nano-CT) imaging and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) Backscattered electron (BSE) and Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) images are used to determine the mineral volume fractions, connected porosity, and accessible mineral surface areas as reactions progress. A reactive transport simulation is carried out in a multicomponent reactive flow and transport modeling tool, CrunchFlow, to simulate reaction rates and the evolution of mineral volume fractions and accessible surface areas. Finally, simulation results are compared with results achieved from the core flood experiment and X-ray imaging outputs.
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