Experimental and numerical investigation of convective dissolution in two-dimensional porous media

In the frame of carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration, accurate measurements and modeling of dissolution fluxes play a key role in understanding the long-term behavior of liquid CO2 injected in underground geological formations. Currently, experiments can easily reach Rayleigh numbers not achievable with the numerical simulations, and yet the wealth of data obtainable via accurate simulations and its accuracy and repeatability cannot be matched by experiments. In this work, we aim at performing a combined numerical and experimental investigation with a twofold target. First, we carefully benchmark our simulation data vis-à-vis experimental measurements in systems controlled by the convective dissolution. Experimental measurements from a Hele-Shaw cell and pseudo-spectral simulations both show that convective fingers have a huge impact on the dissolution dynamics. Second, we analyze the experimental results obtained at large Rayleigh numbers, currently still unattainable via numerical simulation, and we explore the implications of these results for the CO2 convective dissolution in saline aquifers.