Modeling Silica Deposition in a Porous Medium Column

Abstract

The transport of minerals in hot water reservoirs has received considerable attention because of its importance in geothermal resources development. In the past, numerical techniques have been employed to obtain solutions to silica transport and deposition problems. A fully implicit numerical model, which describes the permeability decrease caused by the silica deposition in porous medium, has been formulated and applied to simulate the laboratory experiments and filed data. A finite difference method is used to discretize the mass of water, silica reaction, and energy balance equations. As an expression for silica deposition rate, we used models of Ramstidt and Barnes.
The numerical model of the rate of silica deposition was applied to the experimental results obtained by Itoi et al. The experiments involved an isothermal flow through packed columns. The rate constant of Ramstidt and Barnes was used in this calculation. A good agreement in the changes of flow rate, permeability, specific deposit, and pressure was achieved.