2021/03/05 by Julien Maes, Maes, Julien, Hannah Menke +1
Engineering · Environmental Science · #CO2 Sequestration and Geologic Interactions #Enhanced Oil Recovery Techniques #FOS: Physical sciences #Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn) #Groundwater flow and contamination studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2103.03579
openalex publication_date 2021/03/05 · openalex created_date 2022/07/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present the novel numerical model GeoChemFoam, a multiphase reactive\ntransport solver for simulations on complex pore geometries, including\nmicrofluidic devices and micro-CT images. The geochemical model includes bulk\nand surface equilibrium reactions. Multiphase flow is solved using the\nVolume-Of-Fluid method and the transport of species is solved using the\nContinuous Species Transfer method. The reactive transport equations are solved\nusing a sequential Operator Splitting method, with the transport step solved\nusing our OpenFOAM-based Computational Fluid Dynamics toolbox, and the reaction\nstep solved using Phreeqc, the US geological survey's geochemical solver. The\nmodel is validated by comparison with analytical solutions in 1D and 2D\ngeometries. We then applied the model to simulate multiphase reactive transport\nin two test pore geometries: a 3D pore cavity and a 3D micro-CT image of\nBentheimer sandstone. In each case, we show the pore-scale simulation results\ncan be used to develop upscaled models that are significantly more accurate\nthan standard macro-scale equilibrium models.\n