Mohammad Nooraiepour , Mohammad Masoudi, Helge Hellevang

Mineral precipitation reactions are critical in reactive transport studies of porous media due to their significant impacts on flow and transport properties. Understanding the nucleation process, a probabilistic phenomenon that determines the location and distribution of solid formation in space and time domains, is essential for accurately comprehending the effect of mineral precipitation on porous media surfaces. To this end, this paper presents microfluidic laboratory experiments and reactive transport modeling of mineral precipitation dynamics under different physicochemical conditions and substrate surface properties. Our results demonstrate the importance of the spatial and temporal location and distribution of nucleation and growth events when the interplay among several determining parameters is inevitable. We show mineral precipitation on primary and secondary substrate surfaces under different supersaturations and temperatures. Our high-resolution EDS-SEM surface maps identify the favorable sites and competing locations for attracting solute concentration and continued growth, providing valuable insights into the mineral precipitation mechanism.