HR: 1340h
AN: H33H-1710    [Abstracts]
TI: Numerical Simulations of Density-Driven Flow in Heterogeneous Porous Media
AU: * Rapaka, S
EM: saikiran@jhu.edu
AF: Dept of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21218, United States
AU: Pawar, R J
EM: rajesh@lanl.gov
AF: EES-6, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87544, United States
AU: Stauffer, P H
EM: stauffer@lanl.gov
AF: EES-6, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87544, United States
AU: Zyvoloski, G
EM: gaz@lanl.gov
AF: EES-6, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87544, United States
AU: Chen, S
EM: syc@jhu.edu
AF: Dept of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21218, United States
AU: Zhang, D
EM: donzhang@ou.edu
AF: Mewbourne School of Petroleum and Geological Engineering, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, United States
AB: In the context of geological sequestration of carbon dioxide, it is well known that convective transport is expected to play a crucial role in accelerating the rate of carbon dioxide dissolution into the brine present in the aquifer. Most previous studies of this convective process have considered a homogeneous porous medium. However, the properties of the aquifer are known to be extremely heterogeneous over all length scales. Previous research on convection in heterogeneous media has suggested that global averaged quantities like Rayleigh number etc. may be inadequate for describing convective transport in such systems. In this talk, I will present some recent results by our group on the process of density-driven convection in heterogeneous porous media. We have used high-resolution numerical simulations with a Monte-Carlo approach to understand the role played by permeability heterogeneity. We show that an averaged global Rayleigh number is more useful than previously believed in predicting convective transport in heterogeneous media. We also discuss the variability of the results with increasing variance of the permeability field.
DE: 1805 Computational hydrology
DE: 1832 Groundwater transport
DE: 1847 Modeling
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting