Ionic Transport in Nano-Porous Clays with Consideration of Electrostatic Effects

Abstract

The mineralogical and chemical properties of clays have been the subject of longstanding study in the research community—in fact, entire journals are devoted to the topic. In the field of hydrology where transport behavior is more routinely considered, clays and clay-rich rock were largely relegated to a minor role because of their low hydraulic conductivity. However, this very property explains in part the renewed interest in the behavior of clays and clay rocks in several important subsurface energy-related applications, including the long-term disposal of nuclear wastes in geological repositories and the storage of CO2 in subsurface geological formations. In these applications and environments, the low permeability of the clay-rich formations or engineered barriers provides at least part of the safety functions for radionuclide contaminants confinement and subsurface CO2 sequestration. From a geochemical and mineralogical point of view, the high adsorption capacity of clay minerals adds to the effect of low hydraulic conductivities by greatly increasing the retardation of radionuclides and other contaminants, making clays ideal where isolation from the biosphere is desired. The low permeability of clay-rich shales also explains why hydrocarbon resources are not easily exploited from these formations, thus requiring in many cases special procedures like hydraulic fracturing in order to extract them. Clay properties remain also topic of intensive research in the oilfield industry in connection with their swelling behavior, which has an adverse impact on drilling operations (Anderson et al. 2010; Wilson and Wilson 2014; De Carvalho Balaban et al. 2015). While the low permeability and high adsorption capacity of clay minerals are widely acknowledged, it is clear nonetheless that there is a need for an improved understanding of how the chemical and mineralogical properties of clay rocks impacts transport through them. It is at the pore-scale that the chemical properties …