Convective mixing in porous media: A review of Darcy, pore-scale and Hele-Shaw studies

TL;DR

This review synthesizes recent advances in understanding convection-driven mixing in porous media through Darcy, pore-scale, and Hele-Shaw studies, emphasizing the complex physics and implications for environmental and engineering challenges.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of different experimental and simulation approaches, highlighting the role of finite-size effects and proposing future research directions.

Findings

Darcy flow results align with theoretical predictions.

Hele-Shaw and pore-scale studies show complex, tangled behaviors.

Finite-size effects significantly influence mixing dynamics.

Abstract

Convection-driven porous media flows are common in industrial processes and in nature. The multiscale and multiphase character of these systems and the inherent non-linear flow dynamics make convection in porous media a complex phenomenon. As a result, a combination of different complementary approaches, namely theory, simulations and experiments, have been deployed to elucidate the intricate physics of convection in porous media. In this work, we review recent findings on mixing in fluid-saturated porous media convection. We focus on the dissolution of a heavy fluid layer into a lighter one, and we consider different flow configurations. We present Darcy, pore-scale and Hele-Shaw investigations inspired by geophysical processes. While the results obtained for Darcy flows match the dissolution behaviour predicted theoretically, Hele-Shaw and pore-scale investigations reveal a different and tangled scenario in which finite-size effects play a key role. Finally, we present recent numerical and experimental developments and we highlight possible future research directions. The findings reviewed in this work will be crucial to make reliable predictions about the long-term behaviour of dissolution and mixing in engineering and natural processes, which are required to tackle societal challenges such as climate change mitigation and energy transition.