Abstract

Water-rock-life interactions take place at interfaces, and thus both fluid composition and the physical and chemical structure of porous media must be treated as coevolving phenomena. One avenue of addressing this coupling is through the use of models that combine the governing equations of flow, transport and reactivity. In this presentation I will demonstrate examples of the utility of both numerical reactive transport models and simplified derivations to address hydrogeochemical problems, including direct simulation of stable sulfur isotope fractionations during microbially-mediated redox cycling and a new derivation of the classic Rayleigh model for porous media flow. The goal is to demonstrate how simulations can be used to interrogate complex field data and thus provide new insights into the processes governing hydrogeochemical systems.