Mihn Tan Vu 'IMVUL' project

Title: Modeling of mineral- microbe systems

Supervisor: Pierre ADLER

Project description:

The major objective of this project is to develop basic numerical tools able to analyse the state and evolution of mineral microbe systems, which may induce permeability reduction and clogging of aquifer media. These tools will be developed in close collaboration with Edinburgh where laboratory experiments on microbial activity in fractured porous media will be performed. In the recent past, the UPMC team has addressed the modeling of deposition of active solutes in porous media and fractured porous media. The present project will further develop these models in a number of novel and complex aspects compared to a first-order chemical reaction. The problems to be tackled include cell motion, deposition and the successive production of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) with consequent permeability reduction, all of which need very different mathematical descriptions. These basic mechanisms will be implemented in existing codes for chemical deposition and incorporated into the codes to be developed in the other ESR project at UPMC. Here the situations to model include: single phase, and then multiphase flow on the pore scale (20 microns), on the fracture scale (10 cm) and on the field scale (10 m). The resulting codes will be tested and compared with data from experiments in microbial activity in rock cores to be performed at Edinburgh.