Johnson, M orcid.org/0000-0003-2124-3717, Peakall, J orcid.org/0000-0003-3382-4578, Fairweather, M et al. (6 more authors) (2019) Sediment microstructure and the establishment of gas migration pathways during bubble growth. Environmental Science and Technology, 53 (21). pp. 12882-12892. ISSN 0013-936X
Abstract
Soft sediments exhibit complex and varied deformation behavior during in situ bubble growth; however, the sediment microstructure is often neglected when predicting bubble networking or fracture propagation dynamics. This study considers three chemically similar Mg(OH)2-rich sediments, which differ slightly in their particle size distributions and morphologies but exhibit significant differences in their porosity, stiffness, and pore throat dimensions at equivalent yield strengths. At low yield strengths, microstructure greatly influenced the size distribution and connectivity of spherical bubble populations, with narrow sedimentary pore throats promoting coarser bubbles with diminished connectivity. Increased connectivity of the bubble population appeared highly significant in limiting bed expansion, either by establishing pathways for gas release or by dissipating excess internal bubble pressure, thereby diminishing further growth. During in situ gas generation, each sediment demonstrated a critical fracture strength, which demarcated the populations with high void fractions (0.27 < ν < 0.4) of near-spherical bubbles from a fracturing regime supporting reduced void fractions (ν ≈ 0.15) of high aspect ratio cracks. However, critical fracture strengths varied significantly (in the 60–1000 Pa range) between sediments, with coarser-grained and higher porosity sediments promoting fracture at lower strengths. Fracture propagation greatly enhanced the connectivity and diminished the tortuosity of the void networks, thereby augmenting the continuous gas release flux.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 American Chemical Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Chemical & Process Engineering (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Institute for Applied Geosciences (IAG) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EPSRC EP/L014041/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 02 Oct 2019 14:43 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 22:00 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Chemical Society |
Identification Number: | 10.1021/acs.est.9b03034 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:151602 |