The Earth Resources Challenge

Vilhelmsen, Troels Norvin; Maher, K.; Silva, Carla Da; Hermans, Thomas; Grujic, Ognjen; Park, Jihoon; Yang, Guang

doi:10.1002/9781119325888.ch1

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Groundwater systems are important inorganic carbon reservoirs, and they are gaining attention as to which extent they contribute to the global carbon cycle. Estimates of carbon fluxes in the subsurface are hugely uncertain due to difficulties in (1) calculating groundwater and chemical fluxes (Fontaine et al, 2007;McCallum et al, 2012;Li et al, 2015), (2) subsurface conceptualisation (Vilhelmsen et al, 2018;Enemark et al, 2019), and (3) the dynamic role of soils in CO 2 storage and deep recharge (Kessler and Harvey, 2001;Fontaine et al, 2007;Sánchez-Cañete et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantification of Carbon Cycling in a Large Aquifer Using Reactive Transport Modelling

Miotliński

Peeters

2021

Front. Water

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Continental scale aquifers can store significant amounts of carbon as a result of immense water volumes, substantial concentrations of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and its reactions with a matrix, thus contributing the global carbon storage and cycle. However, concentration of dissolved solutes may vary significantly over distances, which causes interpretative challenges and difficulties in process quantification. This occurs in the Guarani Aquifer System in South America, which is a subject of extensive research due to a significant strategic role in water supply. Dissolved CO2 is expected to dissociate and undergo reactions with aluminosilicate minerals, but it is unknown how much DIC may get immobilised in the aquifer. To quantify the processes, we performed reactive transport modelling which combines hydrological and geochemical information followed by global sensitivity analysis. We show that more than a half of the infiltrated CO2 may be consistently precipitated as CaCO3. The DIC concentrations across the aquifer depend primarily on the input carbon concentrations and the plagioclase hydrolysis rate, while other parameters including hydraulic conductivity, recharge rate and mineral stability are of the minor importance. We present how advanced modelling techniques may be used to interpret and quantify processes controlling water quality in continental scale groundwater systems.

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