Simulation of Front Instabilities in Density-Driven Flow, Using a Reactive Transport Model for Biogrout Combined with a Randomly Distributed Permeability Field

Simulation of Front Instabilities in Density-Driven Flow, Using a Reactive Transport Model for Biogrout Combined with a Randomly Distributed Permeability Field

Van Wijngaarden-van Rossum, W.K.
Van Paassen, L.A.
Vermolen, F.J.
Van Meurs, G.A.M.
Vuik, C.

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Delft Institute of Applied Mathematics

2016-02-26

Biogrout is a method to strengthen granular soil, which is based on microbial-induced carbonate precipitation. To model the Biogrout process, a reactive transport model is used. Since high flow rates are undesirable for the Biogrout process, the model equations can be solved with a standard Galerkin finite element method. The Biogrout process involves the injection of dense fluids in the subsurface. In this paper, we present our reactive transport model for Biogrout and use it to simulate an experiment in which a pulse of a dense fluid is injected in a porous medium filled with water. In this experiment, front instabilities were observed in the form of fingers. The numerical simulations showed that the fingering phenomenon was less pronounced than in the experiment. By reducing the dispersion length and implementing a randomly distributed permeability field, the fingering phenomenon could be induced. Furthermore, the results of a case study to a Biogrout application are reported.

biogrout
fingering
randomly distributed permeability field
microbial-induced carbonate precipitation (MICP)
numerical simulation

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:cd58381d-0fa8-447d-a419-d5fd8768d027

Springer

0169-3913

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11242-016-0649-3

Transport in Porous Media, 2016

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2016 The Author(s)
This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com