Perth Laboratory – Public Seminar Series 2009

Effective Non-Local Reaction Kinetics for Transport in Physically and Chemically Heterogeneous Media

Professor Marco Dentz
Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research
Spanish Council of Scientific Research

Thursday 29 October 2009 at 3.30pm, CSIRO Auditorium

Abstract

The correct characterization of the effective reactive transport dynamics is an important issue for modelling reactive transport on the Darcy scale, specifically in situations in which reactions are localized, that is when reactions occur in different portions of the porous medium. Under such conditions the conventional approach of homogenizing the porous medium chemistry only is not appropriate. We consider here reactive transport in a porous medium that is characterized by mass transfer between a mobile and a series of immobile regions. Geochemical reaction can occur in the mobile and immobile zones. We derive an effective reactive transport equation for the mobile solute that is characterized by a non-local retardation term as well as by a non-local reaction term. Chemical heterogeneity, which is reflected by distributed kinetic rate constants and physical heterogeneity as modelled by a distribution of mass transfer rates are intimately related in non-local transport and reaction kernels of the effective transport equation. The impact of physical and chemical heterogeneity cannot be up-scaled separately.

About the speaker

Marco Dentz is full professor (Profesor de Investigacion) at the Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDAEA-CSIC) of the Spanish Council of Scientific Research. He obtained his PhD in Physics from the University of Heidelberg, Germany in 2000, where he worked on the temporal behaviour of transport parameters in heterogeneous porous media. He was Minerva Fellow at the Department of Environmental Sciences and Energy Research at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel from 2001 to 2002. He has been a visiting Professor with the Department of Geotechnical Engineering and Geosciences at the Technical University of Catalonia, Spain and was Ramon y Cajal Fellow from 2004 to 2009. Professor Dentz's main research interest is modelling and up-scaling of reactive transport processes in heterogeneous media.

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