Effective compressibility of a bubbly slurry. I. Theory of the behavior of bubbles trapped in porous media

Bubbles trapped within the slurry at the bottom of waste tanks at the Hanford Site expand and contract in response to ambient pressure changes. These bubbles contain hydrogen and other flammable gases that can pose a safety hazard. Determining the effective compressibility of bubbles in the slurry could allow one to make improved estimates of the quantity of gas trapped in the slurry from changes in slurry volume with ambient pressure changes. More broadly, the diffusive growth and mechanical properties of bubbles in a porous medium are important issues in a number of applications. Numerical calculations based on a one-dimensional biconical-pore-network model show that the effective compressibility of a population of bubbles shows hysteresis with pressure increase and decrease. This hysteresis is caused by the sudden jumps of interfaces from pore throat to throat during a pressure decrease and from pore body to body during a pressure increase. Snap-off may occur during these jumps but does not significantly alter the effective compressibility of the population of bubbles. (C) 2001 Academic Press.