Hydrodynamic controls on mineral precipitation in porous media: From pore-scale clogging to continuum permeability upscaling

Yaohui Wang , Fugang Wang, Donghui Wang, Hui Cheng, Yilong Yuan

Mineral precipitation can sharply reduce permeability in reactive porous media, yet continuum models commonly represent this effect using fixed porosity-permeability relationships that do not account for hydrodynamic controls on precipitation localisation. Here we use pore-scale reactive transport simulations of calcite precipitation in six synthetic two-dimensional porous structures to examine how the Péclet number (Pe) regulates precipitation patterns and permeability evolution. The simulations cover diffusion- to advection-dominated regimes. Low Pe promotes reactant consumption near the inlet, producing localised clogging and rapid loss of connected flow paths. By contrast, high Pe transports reactants farther into the pore network, leading to more distributed precipitation and a slower permeability decline. As a result, permeability is not a unique function of porosity: in low-Pe cases, permeability can collapse after only about 1-4% porosity loss, whereas high-Pe cases can sustain larger porosity reductions before severe hydraulic impairment occurs. We capture this behaviour using a power-law porosity-permeability model with a clogging parameter. Fits to 1,152 pore-scale simulations yield coefficients of determination of 0.82-0.99 and show that the clogging parameter decreases systematically with Pe. Embedding this Pe-dependent parameterisation into a continuum reactive transport simulation allows permeability updates to respond to local flow conditions, unlike fixed Kozeny-Carman or Verma-Pruess relationships. This framework links pore-scale precipitation localisation to continuum-scale permeability evolution and provides a mechanistic basis for predicting precipitation-induced hydraulic impairment in hydrologically heterogeneous subsurface systems.