Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2008
An analysis is given of brine transport through a porous medium, which incorporates the effect of volume changes due to variations in the salt concentration. Two specific situations are investigated which lead to self-similarity. We develop the existence and uniqueness theory for the corresponding ordinary differential equations, and give a number of qualitative properties of the solutions. In particular, we present an asymptotic expression for the solution in terms of the relative density difference (ρs−ρf)/ρf. Finally, we show some numerical results. It is found that the volume changes have a noticeable effect on the mass transport only when salt concentrations are large.