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We formulate a hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin method for parabolic equations with non-linear tensor-valued coefficients and jump conditions (Henry's law). The analysis of the proposed scheme indicates the optimal convergence order for mildly non-linear problems. The same order is also obtained in our numerical studies for simplified settings. A series of numerical experiments investigate the effect of choosing different order approximation spaces for various unknowns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate reactive flow and transport in evolving porous media. Solute species that are transported within the fluid phase are taking part in mineral precipitation and dissolution reactions for two competing mineral phases. The evolution of the three phases is not known a-priori but depends on the concentration of the dissolved solute species. To model the coupled behavior, phase-field and level-set models are formulated. These formulations are compared in three increasingly challenging setups including significant mineral overgrowth. Simulation outcomes are examined with respect to mineral volumes and surface areas as well as derived effective quantities such as diffusion and permeability tensors. In doing so, we extend the results of current benchmarks for mineral dissolution/precipitation at the pore-scale to the multiphasic solid case. Both approaches are found to be able to simulate the evolution of the three-phase system, but the phase-field model is influenced by curvature-driven motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to study the efficiency of the various forms of trapping including mineral trapping scenarios for CO2 storage behavior in deep layers of porous media, highly nonlinear coupled diffusion-advection-reaction partial differential equations (PDEs) including kinetic and equilibrium reactions modeling the miscible multiphase multicomponent flow have to be solved. We apply the globally fully implicit PDE reduction method (PRM) developed 2007 by Kräutle and Knabner for one-phase flow, which was extended 2019 to the case of two-phase flow with a pure gas in the study of Brunner and Knabner. We extend the method to the case of an arbitrary number of gases in gaseous phase, because CO2 is not the only gas that threats the climate, and usually is accompanied by other climate killing gases. The application of the PRM leads to an equation system consisting of PDEs, ordinary differential equations, and algebraic equations. The Finite Element discretized / Finite Volume stabilized equations are separated into a local and a global system but nevertheless coupled by the resolution function and evaluated with the aid of a nested Newton solver, so our solver is fully global implicit. For the phase disappearance, we use persistent variables which lead to a semismooth formulation that is solved with a semismooth Newton method. We present scenarios of the injection of a mixture of various gases into deep layers, we investigate phase change effects in the context of various gases, and study the mineral trapping effects of the storage technique. The technical framework also applies to other fields such as nuclear waste storage or oil recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a macroscale model of transport and reaction of chemical species in a porous medium with a special focus on mineral precipitation–dissolution processes. In the literature, it is frequently proposed that the reaction rate should depend on the reactive mineral surface area, and so on the amount of mineral. We point out that a frequently used model is ill posed in the sense that it admits non-unique solutions. We investigate what consequences this non-uniqueness has on the numerical solution of the model. The main novelty in this article is our proposal of a certain substitution which removes the ill-posedness from the system and which leads to better numerical results than some "ad hoc methods." We think that the proposed substitution is a rather elegant way to get rid of the non-uniqueness and the numerical difficulties and is much less technical than other ideas. As a proof of concept, we present some numerical tests and simulations for the new model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wavelet (Besov) priors are a promising way of reconstructing indirectly measured fields in a regularized manner. We demonstrate how wavelets can be used as a localized basis for reconstructing permeability fields with sharp interfaces from noisy pointwise pressure field measurements in the context of the elliptic inverse problem. For this we derive the adjoint method of minimizing the Besov-norm-regularized misfit functional (this corresponds to determining the maximum a posteriori point in the Bayesian point of view) in the Haar wavelet setting. As it turns out, choosing a wavelet–based prior allows for accelerated optimization compared to established trigonometrically–based priors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various processes such as heterogeneous reactions or biofilm growth alter a porous medium's underlying geometric structure. This significantly affects its hydrodynamic parameters, in particular the medium's effective permeability. An accurate, quantitative description of the permeability is, however, essential for predictive flow and transport modeling. Well-established relations such as the Kozeny–Carman equation or power law approaches including fitting parameters relate the porous medium's porosity to a scalar permeability coefficient. Opposed to this, upscaling methods directly enable calculating the full, potentially anisotropic, permeability tensor. As input, only the geometric information in terms of a representative elementary volume is needed. To compute the porosity–permeability relations, supplementary cell problems must be solved numerically on this volume and their solutions must be integrated. We apply this approach to provide easy-to-use quantitative porosity–permeability relations that are based on representative single grain, platy, blocky, prismatic soil structures, porous networks, and real geometries obtained from CT-data. As a discretization method, we use discontinuous Galerkin method on structured grids. To make the relations explicit, interpolation of the obtained data is used. We compare the outcome with the well-established relations and investigate the ranges of the validity. From our investigations, we conclude whether Kozeny–Carman-type or power law-type porosity–permeability relations are more reasonable for various prototypic representative elementary volumes. Finally, we investigate the impact of a microporous solid matrix onto the permeability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a numerical framework for efficiently simulating partially miscible two-phase flow with multicomponent reactive transport in porous media using the global implicit approach. The mathematical model consists of coupled and nonlinear partial differential equations, ordinary differential equations, and algebraic equations. Our approach is based on a model-preserving reformulation using the reduction scheme of Kräutle and Knabner (Water Resour. Res. 43(3), 2007), Hoffmann et al. (Comput. Geosci. 16(4):1081-1099, 2012) to transform the system. Moreover, a nonlinear, implicitly defined resolution function to reduce its size is employed. By choosing persistent primary variables and using a complementarity approach, mineral reactions and the local appearance and disappearance of the gas phase can be handled without a discontinuous switch of primary variables. In each time step of the Euler-implicit time stepping scheme, the discrete nonlinear systems are solved using the Semismooth Newton method for linearization using the global implicit approach. Thus, we obtain an efficient, robust, and stable simulation method allowing for large time steps and avoiding the potential drawbacks of splitting approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An accurate quantitative description of the diffusion coefficient in a porous medium is essential for predictive transport modeling. Well-established relations, such as proposed by Buckingham, Penman, and Millington-Quirk, relate the scalar diffusion coefficient to the porous medium’s porosity. To capture the porous medium’s structure in more detail, further models include fitting parameters, geometric, or shape factors. Some models additionally account for the tortuosity, e.g., via Archie’s law. A validation of such models has been carried out mainly via experiments relating the proposed description to a specific class of porous media (by means of parameter fitting). Contrary to these approaches, upscaling methods directly enable calculating the full, potentially anisotropic, effective diffusion tensor without any fitting parameters. As input only the geometric information in terms of a representative elementary volume is needed. To compute the diffusion-porosity relations, supplementary cell problems must be solved numerically and their (flux) solutions must be integrated. We apply this approach to provide easy-to-use quantitative diffusion-porosity relations that are based on representative single grain, platy, blocky, prismatic soil structures, porous networks, or random porous media. As a discretization method, we use the discontinuous Galerkin method on structured grids. To make the relations explicit, interpolation of the obtained data is used. We furthermore compare the obtained diffusion-porosity relations with the well-established relations mentioned above and also with the well-known Voigt-Reiss or Hashin-Shtrikman bounds. We discuss the ranges of validity and further provide the explicit relations between the diffusion and surface area and comment on the role of a tortuosity-porosity relation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a new version of the local discontinuous Galerkin method which is capable of dealing with jump conditions along a submanifold ΓLG (i.e., Henry’s Law) in instationary Darcy flow. Our analysis accounts for a spatially and temporally varying, non-linear permeability tensor in all estimates which is also allowed to have a jump at ΓLG and gives a convergence order result for the primary and the flux unknowns. In addition to this, different approximation spaces for the primary and the flux unknowns are investigated. The results imply that the most efficient choice is to choose the degree of the approximation space for the flux unknowns one less than that of the primary unknown. The only stabilization in the proposed scheme is represented by a penalty term in the primary unknown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an a priori stability and convergence analysis of a new mixed discontinuous Galerkin scheme applied to the instationary Darcy problem. The analysis accounts for a spatially and temporally varying permeability tensor in all estimates. The proposed method is stabilized using penalty terms in the primary and the flux unknowns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]