Flow and Reactions in Permeable Rocks

The formation of ore deposits and the patterns of mineral alteration in rocks frequently involves the transport of large amounts of dissolved solids, sometimes transiently but often over long periods of time. Knowing or suspecting this, we logically seek to resolve several questions: What are the large- and small-scale patterns of flow in geological materials? What is the direction and rate of flow in a given structure? What factors control the rates of chemical reactions within rocks? What governs the dissolution of materials in some regions and their disposition in others, which, over eons, leads to the distribution of minerals we see today? The search for answers to these issues involves a combination of approaches and subjects that includes geochemistry, structural geology, and fluid mechanics. In Flow and Reactions in Permeable Rocks, Dr Owen Phillips provides the first book-length work that connects these different fields of study and applies them to the problem of flow and flow-controlled reaction in rocks. The author begins by specifying the general physical and chemical principles that govern fluid flow and chemical reactions in rocks. He then develops the theoretical underpinnings for a variety of different patterns of flow and for the three basic types of flow-controlled reactions; fronts, gradient reactions, and reactions in mixing zones. He then explores some conditions for stability and instability in fluid flow, for instance, the conditions under which one state or flow pattern spontaneously evolves into another. Finally, Dr Phillips describes in detail the consequences of the two great driving forces of large-scale fluid circulation in rocks; pressure differences and thermal convection. Typical geological examples are given and, wherever possible, compared to numerical results or field observations. The analytical developments require some familiarity with college-level mathematics, but derivations are easy to follow and can even be skipped by the trusting reader. Flow and Reactions in Permeable Rocks is written for graduate-level geologists, geochemists, and geophysicists studying the physics and chemistry of ore formation, metamorphism in rocks, and fluid mechanics. It will also be of use to some applied mathematicians interested in a combination of dynamical and chemical aspects of fluid flow.