Reconstruction of in-situ porosity and porewater compositions of low-permeability crystalline rocks: Magnitude of artefacts induced by drilling and sample recovery.

Geological site characterisation programmes typically rely on drill cores for direct information on subsurface rocks. However, porosity, transport properties and porewater composition measured on drill cores can deviate from in-situ values due to two main artefacts caused by drilling and sample recovery: (1) mechanical disruption that increases porosity and (2) contamination of the porewater by drilling fluid. We investigated the effect and magnitude of these perturbations on large drill core samples (12-20 cm long, 5 cm diameter) of high-grade, granitic gneisses obtained from 350 to 600 m depth in a borehole on Olkiluoto Island (SW Finland). The drilling fluid was traced with sodium-iodide. By combining out-diffusion experiments, gravimetry, UV-microscopy and iodide mass balance calculations, we successfully quantified the magnitudes of the artefacts: 2-6% increase in porosity relative to the bulk connected porosity and 0.9 to 8.9 vol.% contamination by drilling fluid. The spatial distribution of the drilling-induced perturbations was revealed by numerical simulations of 2D diffusion matched to the experimental data. This showed that the rims of the samples have a mechanically disrupted zone 0.04 to 0.22 cm wide, characterised by faster transport properties compared to the undisturbed centre (1.8 to 7.7 times higher pore diffusion coefficient). Chemical contamination was shown to affect an even wider zone in all samples, ranging from 0.15 to 0.60 cm, in which iodide enrichment was up to 180 mg/kg water, compared to 0.5 mg/kg water in the uncontaminated centre. For all samples in the present case study, it turned out that the magnitude of the artefacts caused by drilling and sample recovery is so small that no correction is required for their effects. Therefore, the standard laboratory measurements of porosity, transport properties and porewater composition can be taken as valid in-situ estimates. However, it is clear that the magnitudes strongly depend on site- and drilling-specific factors and therefore our results cannot be transferred simply to other locations. We recommend the approach presented in this study as a route to obtain reliable values in future drilling campaigns aimed at characterising in-situ bedrock properties.

How mobile are sorbed cations in clays and clay rocks?

Diffusion of cations and other contaminants through clays is of central interest, because clays and clay rocks are widely considered as barrier materials for waste disposal sites. An intriguing experimental observation has been made in this context: Often, the diffusive flux of cations at trace concentrations is much larger and the retardation smaller than expected based on their sorption coefficients. So-called surface diffusion of sorbed cations has been invoked to explain the observations but remains a controversial issue. Moreover, the corresponding surface diffusion coefficients are largely unknown. Here we show that, by an appropriate scaling, published diffusion data covering a broad range of cations, clays, and chemical conditions can all be modeled satisfactorily by a surface diffusion model. The average mobility of sorbed cations seems to be primarily an intrinsic property of each cation that follows inversely its sorption affinity. With these surface mobilities, cation diffusion coefficients can now be estimated from those of water tracers. In pure clays at low salinities, surface diffusion can reduce the cation retardation by a factor of more than 1000.