Simulation of dissolution processes caused by noncatalytic heterogeneous reactions in porous media is crucial in applications such as acidizing oil and gas reservoirs and cleaning water wells. Many such reactions follow nonlinear reversible kinetics, which can strongly alter dissolution patterns. This study introduces a novel boundary condition within the lattice Boltzmann framework for simulating reversible heterogeneous reactions with general nonlinear rate laws. The accuracy of the method is verified against analytical solutions and numerical benchmarks. The effects of reversible reaction kinetics, including forward and backward reaction orders and the equilibrium constant, on the dissolution rate of single- and multi-obstacle systems were systematically investigated across a range of Damköhler numbers. Results show that increasing the forward reaction order significantly reduces overall dissolution rates, whereas higher backward orders and equilibrium constants accelerate them. These kinetic factors have a pronounced influence at moderate to high Damköhler numbers but a negligible impact at low values. Due to enhanced diffusion resistance, the Damköhler threshold at which kinetic effects diminish is significantly lower in multi-obstacle systems than in single-obstacle ones. • New LBM BC for nonlinear reversible heterogeneous reactions was validated vs benchmarks. • Nonlinear kinetics role in dissolution rates was examined; critical for reactive flows. • Increasing forward order decreases dissolution rate; increasing backward order and Keq increase the rate. • Reaction order influence diminishes at low Da under reaction-controlled conditions. • Reaction order effect persists at high Da reversible kinetics, unlike irreversible kinetics.
Izadi et al. (2026) studied this question.