CONVERGENCE ANALYSIS OF FINITE VOLUME SCHEMESFOR A COMPOSITIONAL FLOW MODEL IN HEAP LEACHINGOF COPPER ORES
E.CARIAGA, F.CONCHA, AND M.SEP´ULVEDA
Abstract.
This paper develops discretizations using finite volume methodfor nonlinear, degenerate, convection-diffusion-reaction system in multiple di-mensions on unstructured grids. A Godunov scheme is used for the convectionterm. We prove the convergence of these FVS. This is done by means of a prioriestimates in
L
∞
and
BV
estimates without any CFL conditions. Numericalresults for heap leaching for copper extraction simulation are presented.
1.
Introduction.
Leaching is a mass transfer process between the leaching solution (fluid phase)and the ore bed (solid phase) [9, 14]. The heap leaching process, for copper pro-duction, can be considered as a
flow of two fluids phases
(liquid and gaseous) and
components transport
(sulfuric acid, copper’s ions, water, air, oxigen, for example)in a porous medium (the heap) [7, 13, 16, 19]. Therefore, the two phenomena of interest are: the fluids flow and the physicochemical reactions. In this work we fol-low the
decoupled approach
, where these two phenomena can be studied separatelyif the extent of leaching does not influence the flow pattern. In other words, theflow pattern in a heap depends on the initial conditions of the heap only.The first problem, i.e., the fluids’s flow in heap leaching has been studied in[5, 6, 13, 18], for example. Specifically, Cariaga et.al., in [5], studied the applica-tion of classical two phase flow equations (cf. [8, 10], for an study of this equationsin a more general context) to heap leaching. By another hand, the components’stransport problem, i.e., the physicochemical reactions phenomena, has been stud-ied in [4, 13, 14, 18], for example. Specifically, [4] and [13] studied this problemin the two phase context, but without any theoretical convergence analysis. In thepresent work, we study the convergence of a numerical scheme for the transportmodel proposed in [4], which consists in the system formed by the equations (2.3),(2.4) and (2.5). In our model the nonlinearity of diffusion term is relevant and can-not be neglected. Additionally, this diffusion term degenerates in one point: whenthe volumetric concentration is equal to zero. The main difficulties related to theconvergence of the approximate solution of such equations is the degeneracy of thediffusion term, the solution then lacks regularity. By this reason, the convergenceanalysis is done by means of a priori estimates in
L
∞
and
BV
estimates without
Key words and phrases.
compositional flow model, porous media, finite volume method, heapleaching, degenerate parabolic equation, convection-diffusion-reaction system.The authors wish to thank Fondecyt: project No.1070694, Conicyt-DAAD: project No.2003-154, Fondap in Applied Mathematics: project No.15000001, Fundaci´on Andes: proyect No.14040,the Catholic University of Temuco, and the Mineral Technology Center Cettem Ltd., for thefinancial support given to this research work.
1
2 E.CARIAGA, F.CONCHA, AND M.SEP´ULVEDA
any CFL conditions.Our numerical scheme consists in an combined approach, i.e, for the convectiveterm we apply a finite volume scheme, upwind Godunov, and for the diffusive termwe apply the P1 finite element method. This combined approach was applied byin [1], where their mathematical problem consists in a nonlinear, degenerate, andconvection-diffusion equation, and without reaction term. Our mathematical prob-lem considers a reactive term, a system formed by a convection-diffusion-reactionequation and an ordinary differential equation, non homogeneous Neumann bound-ary conditions, which corresponds to the physical behavior of the irrigation andinfiltration processes in heap leaching.The paper is organized as follows. In section 2, we state the compositional flowmodel for the volumetric concentration of sulfuric acid in liquid phase and for thecopper’s ions in liquid and solid phase. In section 3 we state the finite volumescheme, where a Godunov’s scheme is used for the approximation of the convectiveterm. Additionally, for the diffusive term, let us consider a standard
P
1
-FEM. Insections 4 and 5 we present the main convergence results, for sulfuric acid equa-tion and for the copper system, respectively. We derive
L
∞
,
weak BV
and
BV
estimates. Finally, in section 6 we report some computational experiments.2.
Compositional Flow Model.
We considers a two phase (liquid and gaseous phase)-two component (sulfuricacid and copper) system 2p2c, in the porous medium formed by the heap. Let aREV (
representative elementary volume
) (see [3, 10] for more details). The porosity
φ
of the porous medium is defined as the ratio between the
volume of the pore spacewithin the
REV and
the volume of
REV, and the saturation of phase
α
=
w,n
(where
α
=
w
is the liquid phase and
α
=
n
is the gaseous phase),
s
α
, is defined asthe ratio between the
volume of fluid
α
within the
REV and the
volume of the porespace within the
REV. We impose the customary property that the fluids fill thevolume:
s
w
+
s
n
= 1. A mass balance must be specified for each component. Themass balance equations for the transport of component
κ
(
κ
=
a
for the sulfuricacid, and
κ
=
c
for the copper) in
α
-phase can be written as [2], [10]:(2.1)
∂
(
θ
α
c
ακ
)
∂t
+
·
(
c
ακ
u
α
−
D
(
u
α
)
c
ακ
) + Φ
α
= 0,where
c
ακ
is the volumetric concentration defined as the ratio between the
mass of component
κ
in phase
α
and the
volume of phase
α
,
θ
α
:=
φs
α
, is the liquid content,
u
α
is the
Darcy’s flow of phase
α
, Φ
α
[
kg/m
3
·
s
] is the irreversible rate of soluteremoved (or added) from (to) the liquid solution,
D
is the dispersity-diffusion tensorgiven by
D
ij
:=
α
L
|
u
α
|
δ
ij
+ (
α
L
−
α
T
)
u
i
u
j
|
u
α
|
+
D
m
δ
ij
, where
α
L
and
α
T
are thelongitudinal and transverse dispersities, respectively,
δ
ij
= 1 if
i
=
j
and
δ
ij
= 0 if
i
=
j
, and
D
m
is the molecular diffusion coefficient (in this paper we set
D
m
= 0).By another hand, if is assumed that there is a isotherm between the liquid phase andthe solid phase
ϕ
ακ
=
ϕ
ακ
(
c
ακ
), defined as the ratio between the
mass of component in solid phase
and
mass of solid phase
, then (using the assumption that sorptiononly occurs from the liquid to the solid phase), the equation for the liquid phasecan be modified to include adsorption:(2.2)
∂
(
φ
s
ρ
s
ϕ
ακ
)
∂t
+
∂
(
θ
α
c
ακ
)
∂t
+
·
(
c
ακ
u
α
−
D
(
u
α
)
c
wκ
) + Φ
α
= 0,
COMPOSITIONAL FLOW IN HEAP LEACHING 3
where
φ
s
:= 1
−
φ
,
ρ
s
is ore bulk density. Note that the most common sorptionisotherms (cf. [11]) are
Langmuir
type:
ϕ
ακ
(
w
) :=
k
1
w
1+
k
2
w
, or
Freundlich
type:
ϕ
ακ
(
w
) :=
k
3
w
p
,
0
< p
, or
mixed
type:
ϕ
ακ
:=
k
4
w
p
1+
k
5
w
p
.
Decoupled Approach
. In equations (2.1) y (2.2) we suppose that, for
α
=
w,n
,the functions
θ
α
=
φs
α
and
u
α
, are known from the classical two phase equations(cf. [4, 5, 6] for its numerical solution in the context of heap leaching):
∂
(
φρ
w
s
w
)
∂t
+
·
(
ρ
w
u
w
) =
ρ
w
q
w
,∂
(
φρ
n
s
n
)
∂t
+
·
(
ρ
n
u
n
) =
ρ
n
q
n
,
u
w
=
−
k
rw
µ
w
k
·
(
p
w
−
ρ
w
g
)
,
u
n
=
−
k
rn
µ
n
k
·
(
p
n
−
ρ
n
g
)
, p
c
(
s
w
) =
p
n
−
p
w
,s
w
+
s
n
= 1
,
where
ρ
α
is the density of
α
-phase,
k
is the absolute permeability of the poroussystems,
p
α
,
µ
α
,
k
rα
are the pressure, viscosity and the relative permeability of the
α
-phase, respectively, and
g
is the gravitational, downward-pointing, constantvector,
q
α
is a source term, and
p
c
is the capillary pressure.2.1.
Sulfuric acid transport equation.
During migration through the porousmedia (heap) sulfuric acid reacts with the different contained minerals, copperincluded. This reaction is an irreversible process that gives rise to a consumption(neutralization) of the acid present in the liquid solution. Acid consumption isassumed to be proportional to its concentration (
µc
wa
) in (2.3)). Additionally, andfollowing to Suazo in [18], we considers an adsorption/desorption phenomenon,which is modeled using a equilibrium isotherm (
ϕ
wa
(
c
wa
)). Therefore, from (2.1)with Φ
α
:=
θ
w
µc
wa
, the transport equation of sulfuric acid in leach solution is givenby(2.3)
∂
(
φ
s
ρ
s
ϕ
wa
(
c
wa
))
∂t
+
∂
(
θ
w
c
wa
)
∂t
+
·
(
c
wa
u
w
−
D
(
u
w
)
c
wa
) +
θ
w
µc
wa
= 0,where
µ
is a first-order reaction constant (consumption factor) and
c
wa
is the volu-metric concentration of sulfuric acid in leach solution.2.2.
Copper transport equation in liquid phase.
The transport of copper ionsthrough the heap is mainly governed by two processes. The first process consists of achemical reaction that occurs between the leaching agent and the mineral particles.The copper present in the ore is solubilized passing from the solid to the liquid phase.The kinetic involved is a the first order (
ρ
s
k
e
c
wa
c
sc
in (2.4)) heterogeneous reaction.Therefore, the first process is extraction of copper from the solid phase to the liquidphase. The second process in the copper adsorption/desorption phenomenon, whichis modeled using a equilibrium isotherm (
ϕ
wc
(
c
wc
) in (2.4)). Therefore, from (2.2)with Φ
α
:=
φ
s
ρ
s
k
e
c
wa
c
sc
, the transport equation of copper in leach solution is given
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