Homogenization of a mineral dissolution and precipitation model involving free boundaries at the micro scale

TL;DR

This paper develops a homogenized macroscopic model for mineral dissolution and precipitation in porous media with evolving microstructure and free boundaries, using multi-scale analysis and two-scale convergence techniques.

Contribution

It introduces a novel homogenization approach for a nonlinear free boundary problem with microstructural evolution in porous media.

Findings

Proved existence of weak solutions using the Rothe-method.

Derived a macroscopic model via two-scale convergence.

Established uniform a priori estimates independent of microstructure scale.

Abstract

In this work we present the homogenization of a reaction-diffusion model that includes an evolving microstructure. Such type of problems model, for example, mineral dissolution and precipitation in a porous medium. Hence, we are dealing with a multi-scale problem with free boundaries on the pore scale. In the initial state the microscopic geometry is given by a periodically perforated domain, including spherical solid grains. The radius of each grain is of order $\epsilon$ and depends on the unknown (the solute concentration) at its surface. Therefore the radii of the grains change in time, leading to a nonlinear, free boundary problem. In a first step, we transform the evolving micro domain to a fixed, periodically domain. Using the Rothe-method we prove the existence of a weak solution and obtain a priori estimates that are uniform with respect to $\epsilon$. Finally, letting $\epsilon \to 0$, we derive a macroscopic model, the solution of which approximates the micro-scale solution. For this, we use the method of two-scale convergence, and obtain strong compactness results enabling to pass to the limit in the nonlinear terms.