TY - JOUR
T1 - On the choice of analogue fluids in CO2 convective dissolution experiments
AU - Jafari Raad, Seyed Mostafa
AU - Emami-Meybodi, Hamid
AU - Hassanzadeh, Hassan
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the Associate Editor for their constructive comments, which have greatly improved our paper. This work was supported by a Discovery Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and was enabled in part by support provided by WestGrid (www.westgrid.ca) and Compute Canada Calcul Canada (www.computecanada.ca). All data used in this work are available in open literature.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2016/6/1
Y1 - 2016/6/1
N2 - Mixtures of ethylene glycol and methanol (EG-MeOH) have been used as an analogue system (i.e., EG-MeOH/water) in recent experiments in the context of convective dissolution of CO2 in deep saline aquifers. We have conducted a linear stability analysis of a gravitationally unstable diffusive boundary layer as well as direct numerical simulation of convective mixing involved in dissolution of EG-MeOH species in water. We provide new evidences that EG-MeOH does not resemble the dynamics of convective instabilities and subsequent mixing associated with dissolution of CO2 in water. It is found that there are fundamental differences in the evolution of the buoyancy-driven instability and dynamics of convective mixing between CO2/water and a typical EG-MeOH/water analogue system. Our results show that for a constant Rayleigh number, the onset of convective instabilities for EG-MeOH/water can be different by an order of magnitude as compared with CO2/water. In addition, EG-MeOH/water system reveals different dynamics associated with the convective mixing as compared to CO2/water system. This study improves our understanding of the instability behavior of analogue systems, their proper selection, and motivates further experiments.
AB - Mixtures of ethylene glycol and methanol (EG-MeOH) have been used as an analogue system (i.e., EG-MeOH/water) in recent experiments in the context of convective dissolution of CO2 in deep saline aquifers. We have conducted a linear stability analysis of a gravitationally unstable diffusive boundary layer as well as direct numerical simulation of convective mixing involved in dissolution of EG-MeOH species in water. We provide new evidences that EG-MeOH does not resemble the dynamics of convective instabilities and subsequent mixing associated with dissolution of CO2 in water. It is found that there are fundamental differences in the evolution of the buoyancy-driven instability and dynamics of convective mixing between CO2/water and a typical EG-MeOH/water analogue system. Our results show that for a constant Rayleigh number, the onset of convective instabilities for EG-MeOH/water can be different by an order of magnitude as compared with CO2/water. In addition, EG-MeOH/water system reveals different dynamics associated with the convective mixing as compared to CO2/water system. This study improves our understanding of the instability behavior of analogue systems, their proper selection, and motivates further experiments.
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U2 - 10.1002/2015WR018040
DO - 10.1002/2015WR018040
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84977606956
SN - 0043-1397
VL - 52
SP - 4458
EP - 4468
JO - Water Resources Research
JF - Water Resources Research
IS - 6
ER -