Dissolution and precipitation dynamics during dedolomitization

Abstract

We simulate the processes of dedolomitization and calcium carbonate precipitation using particle tracking. The study is stimulated by the results of a laboratory experiment that examined reactive transport of injected CaCl 2/HCl, into a column of sucrosic dolomite particles, with a constant flow field. The injected fluid supplies Ca 2+ and H +. Dedolomitization is a protonation reaction yielding carbonic acid; a subsequent deprotonation reaction yields CO 32-, and reaction with the abundant Ca 2+ forms the precipitate CaCO 3. The dedolomitization and precipitation processes involve multistep, multispecies chemical reactions, with both irreversible and reversible stages. The particle tracking is governed by spatial and temporal distributions within a continuous time random walk framework. This accounts for the effects of disorder of heterogeneous media (leading to non-Fickian transport) and includes the option of treating purely advective-dispersive (Fickian) transport. The dynamics of dedolomitization are examined for different flow conditions and reaction rates. The fluctuations in the local velocity distributions, due to porosity changes, create conditions for positive feedbacks leading to development of preferential pathways, large-scale nonlinearity, and precipitation banding. These features have been observed in the laboratory experiments and are now accounted for by the simulation results at similar time frames, velocities, and pH levels. Copyright 2011 by the American Geophysical Union.