Mineral precipitation and geometry alteration in porous structures: How to upscale variations in permeability-porosity relationship?

Abstract

Porous materials in natural and engineered environments are subject to morphological changes resulting from interacting chemical and physical processes. The complexity of coupled flow, transport, and chemical processes that occur on different temporal and spatial scales makes it difficult to predict the resulting porosity and permeability alterations. Delineating the controls of mineral precipitation reactions is particularly challenging because it requires the implementation of nucleation criteria and precipitation attributes. By conducting pore-scale simulations, we studied how the amount and stochastic distribution of crystallites, controlled by nucleation, affect the pore geometry and permeability in two-dimensional porous structures. The observed relationships between porosity and permeability show characteristics that differ from ones that are typically applicable in dissolving porous media because of the clogging effect. Additionally, we propose a stochastic framework that upscales the co-evolution of permeability and porosity across length scales. This framework enables precise communication of clogging behavior to continuum-scale simulations based on statistical probability distributions of permeability-porosity variations.