Simulation of salt water intrusion

Karasaki, Kenji*; Ito, Kazumasa*; Maekawa, Keisuke  

We have modeled laboratory experiments of saltwater intrusion using TOUGH2/EOS7. Matching laboratory and simulation results turned out to be quite challenging partly because of numerical dispersion and partly because the experiments were not very well controlled. In order to understand better the effects of numerical dispersion, we simulated the so-called Henry problem, in which a large dispersion coefficient is assumed, resulting in a wide transition zone between freshwater and saltwater. We imposed a sinusoidal boundary condition to see if a large transition zone can be created without explicitly modeling dispersion. However, for the parameters used we were not able to do so. It is still plausible that a wide transition zone is caused by formation heterogeneity and transient effects. Nonetheless, we question the validity of the use of a large dispersion coefficient where the velocity is very low, or where the flow is in the opposite direction of the concentration gradient.