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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-4386</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Transient electroosmotic transport under evolving pH and contrasting background electrolyte concentrations: coupled controls of interfacial charge and pore structure</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wu</surname>
<given-names>Wencheng</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Pan</surname>
<given-names>Guofang</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Dai</surname>
<given-names>Heng</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yang</surname>
<given-names>Jing</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9838-5102</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yang</surname>
<given-names>Ping</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5818-2132</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>South China Institute of Environmental Sciences, Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), Guangzhou, Guangdong  510655, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, MEE, Guangzhou,  Guangdong 510530, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>State Key Laboratory of Geomicrobiology and Environmental Changes, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Hubei Key Laboratory of Yangtze Catchment Environmental Aquatic Science, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>School of Land Engineering, Chang’an University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710054, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>04</day>
<month>08</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>36</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Wencheng Wu et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4386/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4386/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4386/egusphere-2026-4386.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-4386/egusphere-2026-4386.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Electroosmotic flow (EOF) can transport porewater and dissolved neutral solutes through fine-grained porous media, but its magnitude may evolve as electrode reactions alter pH and electrolyte conditions at mineral&amp;ndash;water interfaces. Here, we use 24 two-dimensional pore-scale simulations to quantify how interfacial-charge parameterization, background electrolyte concentration, and pore architecture regulate transient electroosmotic displacement. The model couples incompressible flow, multicomponent Nernst&amp;ndash;Planck&amp;ndash;Poisson transport, time-dependent electrolysis boundary forcing, and chemistry-dependent electroosmotic slip. Zeta potential is calculated from the local aqueous chemistry using either a one-pK electric-double-layer (EDL) parameterization or a two-pK extended triple-layer (ETL) parameterization. The simulations were conducted in four uniformly oriented packings and two composite pore geometries. Under a matched background electrolyte concentration of 10 mM, the geometry-averaged fraction of tracer depleted from the contaminated medium zone after 30 min was 0.998 for the EDL cases and 0.918 for the ETL cases, while the corresponding late-time tailing indices were 0.002 and 0.094. Within the ETL cases, increasing the background electrolyte concentration from 1 to 100 mM reduced the mean 30 min depletion fraction from 0.963 to 0.613 and increased the tailing index from 0.037 to 0.465. None of the 100 mM cases reached 90 % depletion within 30 min. Pore architecture did not alter this group-level ordering but systematically reorganized directional transport and plume geometry within each electrochemical regime. In the uniformly oriented packings, rotation redistributed flow between the gradient-aligned and transverse directions and produced systematic plume reorientation, although fixed-time depletion varied non-monotonically with angle. In the composite geometries, the heterogeneous directional geometry maintained stronger domain-scale directional organization and reached its case-specific early and intermediate progress levels earlier than the non-directional geometry, whereas their fixed-window depletion ranking depended on the electrochemical setting. Comparisons at case-specific relative progress levels separated plume reorganization from differences in transport timescale. These results reveal a two-level control on transient electroosmotic transport: interfacial-charge representation and background electrolyte concentration determine transport magnitude and timescale, whereas pore structure redistributes flow pathways and plume geometry within the resulting regime.</p>
</abstract>
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<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Key Research and Development Program of China</funding-source>
<award-id>2023YFC3709700</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs2">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>42407123</award-id>
</award-group>
<award-group id="gs3">
<funding-source>Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation of Guangdong Province</funding-source>
<award-id>2023A1515110358</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
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