A mathematical model for thermal single-phase flow and reactive transport in fractured porous media

TL;DR

This paper introduces a mathematical model and numerical workflow for simulating thermal single-phase flow with reactive transport in fractured porous media, capturing complex interactions and fracture effects.

Contribution

It presents a novel coupled model and a temporal splitting scheme for efficient simulation of reactive flow in fractured porous media.

Findings

Model accurately captures complex fracture-related phenomena.

Numerical tests validate the model's ability to simulate reactive transport.

The workflow effectively handles the presence of multiple fractures.

Abstract

In this paper we present a mathematical model and a numerical workflow for the simulation of a thermal single-phase flow with reactive transport in porous media, in the presence of fractures. The latter are thin regions which might behave as high or low permeability channels depending on their physical parameters, and are thus of paramount importance in underground flow problems. Chemical reactions may alter the local properties of the porous media as well as the fracture walls, changing the flow path and possibly occluding some portions of the fractures or zones in the porous media. To solve numerically the coupled problem we propose a temporal splitting scheme so that the equations describing each physical process are solved sequentially. Numerical tests shows the accuracy of the proposed model and the ability to capture complex phenomena, where one or multiple fractures are present.