Speaker
Description
Evaporation from porous media partially saturated with saline water can cause density instabilities to form. As water evaporates, the dissolved salt stays behind, which causes the salinity to increase near the top of the porous medium. This creates a gravitationally unstable setting, where density instabilities in the form of fingers can develop. Whether these density instabilities form, depends on several parameters like the permeability and evaporation rate, but also the (initial) water saturation has a strong influence. As water saturation decreases, the storage, convection and diffusion of the dissolved salt also decrease, which all influence the onset of the density instabilities. In this talk, we analyze the formation and development of these instabilities for different initial water saturations, via linear stability analysis and numerical simulations. We find that decreased storage and diffusion make onset of instabilities occur earlier, while decreased convection give later onset. The combined influence is however that lower saturation overall gives earlier onset times. We also find that lower saturation overall gives more fingers, but they are smaller in size. This talk is based on the published paper [1].
[1] C. Bringedal, S. Kiemle, C. J. van Duijn, R. Helmig: Impact of Saturation on Evaporation-Driven Density Instabilities in Porous Media: Mathematical and Numerical Analysis. Transport in Porous Media (2025) https://doi.org/10.1007/s11242-025-02207-y
| Country | Norway |
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