Uncertainty Quantification of Reactive Transport in Fractured Media

Abstract

Uncertainties in elementary reaction rates of chemical mechanisms have traditionally been reported by experimentalists. The development of methodologies to represent the chemical reaction-rate measurement uncertainties is a necessary step towards quantitative predictions of complex reactive transport in fractured media. The method presented in this study provides a useful framework for quantifying uncertainties in both mineral surface area and activation energies. Brute force Monte-Carlo simulations of flow, heat and mass transport in a single fracture illustrating the propagation of the chemical and the physical characterization uncertainties and their impacts on the aperture changes of the fracture under different boundary conditions. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.