ABSTRACT

The convective dissolution of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) in salted water is theoretically studied to determine how parameters such as CO 2 pressure, salt concentration, and temperature impact the short-time characteristics of the buoyancy-driven instability. On the basis of a parameter-free dimensionless model, we perform a linear stability analysis of the time-dependent concentration profiles of CO 2 diffusing into the aqueous solution. We explicit the procedure to transform the predicted dimensionless growth rate and wavelength of the convective pattern into dimensional ones for typical laboratory-scale experiments in conditions close to room temperature and atmospheric pressure. This allows to investigate the implicit influence of the experimental parameters on the characteristic length and time scales of the instability. We predict that increasing CO 2 pressure, or decreasing salt concentration or temperature destabilizes the system with regard to convection, leading to a faster dissolution of CO 2 into salted water.