Does the reactive surface area of sandstone depend on water saturation?-The role of reactive-transport in water film

To investigate how mineral-water reactive surface area changes depending on water saturation, flow-through dissolution experiments were performed using a sandstone core at various water saturations. Fontainebleau sandstone with an open porosity of 6.3%, consisting of ∼100% quartz, was used. The water saturation of the core was adjusted to 0%, 51%, or 100%, and at each saturation, water was infiltrated into the core at a constant pressure. The experimental results showed that the total amount of dissolved Si did not change with decreasing water saturation. It can be therefore concluded that virtually all of the mineral surfaces were wetted with water film and allowed the progression of dissolution; i.e., the reactive surface area was not affected by water saturation despite the presence of air in the pores. The results also suggested that the flushing rate of dissolved Si from the interior of the water film to the exterior was fast enough to keep the Si concentration in the film sufficiently lower than the equilibrium concentration of quartz. We derived a reactive-transport model describing dissolution and diffusion in water film. The model shows that the solute concentration in a film is a function of the film thickness, diffusion length, dissolution rate of the mineral, equilibrium concentration, and roughness factor. As for the Fontainebleau sandstone, film thicknesses of 7-18 nm and diffusion lengths of 300-600 μm were estimated. The reactive-transport calculation confirmed that the overall dissolution rate of our sandstone sample was almost unaffected by water saturation, owing to the high flushing efficiency of dissolved Si in water film, which agrees with the experimental result. Application of the model allows us to evaluate whether the reactive surface area and the dissolution rate change with water saturation for a given rock of interest.