Anomalous Transport in Dissolving Porous Media: Transitions Between Fickian and Non-Fickian Regimes

Abstract

The data in this repository corresponds to the results presented in the manuscript “Anomalous Transport in Dissolving Porous Media: Transitions Between Fickian and Non-Fickian Regimes.” It includes numerical simulation data from dissolution and passive tracer transport simulations for the two scenarios discussed in the manuscript, which illustrate the transition between Fickian and non-Fickian behavior. This data is now publicly available to ensure open access and facilitate the replication of our results in future studies.Mineral dissolution is a key geologic process with broad impacts on natural processes and human activities. Depending on the interplay between advection, diffusion, and reaction rates, mineral dissolution can produce various dissolution patterns, such as wormholing and uniform dissolution. The resulting changes in pore structure directly influence the flow field, which in turn control solute transport behavior. In this study, we conducted numerical modeling of mineral dissolution and solute transport in pore networks to investigate how initial network heterogeneity and dissolution regimes affect transport dynamics. Our findings show that wormholing increases network heterogeneity by creating preferential flow paths and stagnation zones, resulting in a transition from Fickian to non-Fickian transport. Conversely, uniform dissolution extensively homogenizes the pore network and the flow field, leading to a transition from non-Fickian to Fickian transport, even in networks with high initial heterogeneity. Based on the initial heterogeneity and Damköhler number, transitions can be predicted.Research supported as part of the Center on Geo-process in Mineral Carbon Storage, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences at the University of Minnesota under award #DE-SC0023429. Jingxuan Deng and Peter K. Kang acknowledge the National Science Foundation under Grant EAR-2046015 for partial support of this research. Jingxuan Deng acknowledge the University of Minnesota Data Science Initiative and Minnesota’s Discovery, Research, and Innovation Economy for partial support of this research. Piotr Szymczak acknowledges the support of the National Science Centre (Poland) under research Grant 2022/47/B/ST3/03395Deng, Jingxuan; Sharma, Rishabh; Szymczak, Piotr; Kang, Peter K. (2025). Anomalous Transport in Dissolving Porous Media: Transitions Between Fickian and Non-Fickian Regimes. Retrieved from the Data Repository for the University of Minnesota (DRUM), https://hdl.handle.net/11299/270015