Abstract
Understanding coupled processes in subsurface systems is critical to assessing and predicting the long-term impacts of natural phenomena, underground industrial activities, and geoengineering. Here, we discuss the capabilities of a new miniaturized chemo-mechanical testing device that allows for concurrent reactive transport, mechanical loading, and microstructural imaging. The apparatus enables a range of combined deformation/flow tests to be performed simultaneously or sequentially. In addition, the device enables controlling reactant mixing, flow rate, and boundary conditions, which is useful to identify key factors in flow-through precipitation and dissolution experiments in porous media. Results of precipitation, oedometric compression, and dissolution tests are presented along with concurrent microstructural analyses based on synchrotron X-ray microtomography imaging. High-resolution 3-D images of evolving microstructural features allow explicit quantification of pore structure changes. The results illustrate the efficiency and versatility of the new multifunctional testing device and emphasize the benefits of quantifying the outcomes of coupled chemo-mechanical processes at pore scale, which is essential to develop and validate multiscale transport-reaction-deformation models.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Article number | GTJ20190031 |
Journal | Geotechnical Testing Journal |
Volume | 43 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 22 2019 |
Funding
This research was partially supported by the U.S. Department of Energy through grant DE-SC0017615. Funding from the Data Science Initiative of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems is also acknowledged. The experiments were performed at GSECARS (Sector 13), APS, ANL, which is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. GSECARS is supported by the National Science Foundation Earth Sciences Program (EAR-1128799) and by the Department of Energy Geosciences (DE-FG02-94ER14466). The authors thank Mark Rivers of APS for help in conducting the SMT scans.
Keywords
- Chemo-mechanics
- Deformation
- Flow testing
- Mineral dissolution
- Mineral precipitation
- Reactive transport
- X-ray microtomography
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology