HDR

You can find here the manuscript of my Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches.

Published Research Papers

• Doucmak, R., Seigneur, N., Escario, S., Chanvry, E., Lagneau, V., Khaibulin, R., ... & Descostes, M. (2025). The first modeling, measurement, and confirmation of natural attenuation over a 30-year period in a uranium in-situ recovery context: Approaches and perspectives. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, 104607.

• Poyet, S., Bary, B., & Seigneur, N. (2025). Effect of carbonation on the water retention of cementitious materials: case of a C–S–H paste (C/S= 1.4). npj Materials Degradation, 9(1), 1-13.

• De Windt, L., Grizard, P., Besançon, C., Assalack, F., Hama, D., Reiller, P. E., ... & Descostes, M. (2025). Modeling of hydrogeochemical processes influencing uranium migration in anthropized arid environments with application to the Teloua aquifer. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, 104507.

• Seigneur, N., Grozeva, N., Purevsan, B., & Descostes, M. (2024). Reactive transport modelling as a toolbox to compare remediation strategies for aquifers impacted by uranium in situ recovery. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, 265, 104392.

• Bonnet, M., Robin, V., Parrotin, F., Grozeva, N., Seigneur, N., Batbaatar, M. E., & Descostes, M. (2024). Influence of clay minerals on pH and major cation concentrations in acid-leached sands: Column experiments and reactive-transport modeling. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, 104363.

• Socié, A, Seigneur, N, Bary, B, Poyet, S. and Touze, G. (2023). A fully coupled Hydraulic Mechanical Chemical approach applied to cementitious material damage due to carbonation. npj Nature Materials Degradation. Paper link

• Seigneur, N., Socié, A., & Mayer, K. U. (2023). A compositional global implicit approach for modeling coupled multicomponent reactive transport. Water Resources Research, e2021WR031774.

• S. Escario, S., N. Seigneur, A. Collet, O. Regnault, H. de Boissezon, V. Lagneau, M. Descostes. A reactive transport model designed to predict the environmental footprint of an ‘in-situ recovery’uranium exploitation. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, (2023)

• A. Rajyaguru, N. Seigneur, O. Bildstein, S. Savoye, C. Wittebroodt, E.L. Hôpital, V. Detilleux, P. Arnoux, V. Lagneau, Barite and gypsum precipitation in chalk: A numerical simulation approach revealing the coupled impact of physical and chemical heterogeneities in porous media, Chemical Geology (2022)

• Seigneur, N., De Windt, L., Poyet, S., Socié, A. and Dauzères, A. Modelling of the evolving contributions of gas transport, cracks and chemical kinetics during atmospheric carbonation of hydrated C3S and C-S-H pastes. Cement and Concrete Research (2022). Published online july 31st 2022.

• Seigneur, N., De Windt, L., Déjeant, A., Lagneau, V., Descostes, M. Long-Term Evolution of Uranium Mobility Within Sulfated Mill Tailings in Arid Regions: A Reactive Transport Study. Minerals (2021). Special Issue: Formation of Sulfate Minerals in Natural and Industrial Environments

• Noiriel, C., Seigneur, N., Le Guern, P., Lagneau, V. Geometry and mineral het-erogeneity controls on calcite precipitation in fractures: an X-ray micro-tomography and reactive transport modeling study. Submitted to Advances in Water Resources Research - January 2021, accepted april 12th

In this paper, we're investigating the coupled effects of mineral precipitation and flow reorganisation during injection of reactive fluids in fractured rocks. This research helps to understand how to predict the response of such systems, which may be of particular interest for applications such as CO2 sequestration. It was a pleasure to work with Catherine Noiriel and I'm really happy about this paper. 

• Raymond, K., Seigneur, N., Su, D., & Mayer, K. U. (2021). Investigating the Influence of Structure and Heterogeneity in Waste Rock Piles on Mass Loading Rates–A Reactive Transport Modeling Study. Frontiers in Water, 3, 39.

• Yi, X., Su, D., Seigneur, N., & Mayer, K. U. (2021). Modeling of Thermal-Hydrological-Chemical (THC) processes during waste rock weathering under permafrost conditions. Frontiers in Water, 3, 30.

• Seigneur N., Vriens B., Mayer K.U., Beckie R.D. Reactive transport modelling to investigate multi-scale waste rock weathering processes. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, , 103752.

Did you know that mine wastes constitute an environmental risk? Regardless of our future energy choice, mining operations will remain crucial to extract common minerals (copper, iron, uranium) and rare earth minerals. Mine waste is composed of the initial ore formation depleted in the element of interest. This crushed rock is stored as large piles which are subject to atmospheric conditions, which triggers chemical reactions. The most common and "famous" one is the oxidation of sulfide minerals which can potentially trigger acid mine drainage and decrease water quality towards the groundwater.

Predictive simulations, such as reactive transport models, can therefore be beneficial to mitigate the risks and costs associated to water treatment. In this research, we provide a consistent approach to parametrize the intricate physicochemical processes involved in mine wastes, applied to small and large scale experiments. Hopefully, this will help operators and research individuals to develop predictive models in this context. 

• Vriens, B., Seigneur, N., Mayer, K. U., & Beckie, R. D. (2020). Scale dependence of effective geochemical rates in weathering mine waste rock. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, 234, 103699.

In this paper, which is linked to the previous one, we look at scale dependance of parameters which control the weathering of waste rock. This analysis aims at improving the upscaling of laboratory results to larger engineering scales for predicting and mitigating the impact of acid rock drainage.

• Vriens, B., Plante, B., Seigneur, N., & Jamieson, H. (2020). Mine Waste Rock: Insights for Sustainable Hydrogeochemical Management. Minerals, 10(9), 728.

• Raymond, K. E., Seigneur, N., Su, D., Poaty, B., Plante, B., Bussière, B., & Mayer, K. U. (2020). Numerical modeling of a laboratory-scale waste rock pile featuring an engineered cover system. Minerals, 10(8), 652.

• Seigneur, N., Kangni-Foli, E., Lagneau, V., Dauzères, A., Poyet, S., Le Bescop, P., ... & de Lacaillerie, J. B. D. E. (2020). Predicting the atmospheric carbonation of cementitious materials using fully coupled two-phase reactive transport modelling. Cement and Concrete Research, 130, 105966.

This work summarizes the work from my first postdoc and is dedicated to model the impact of atmospheric carbonation of cementitious materials using the developed methodology in Hytec (Seigneur et al. 2018).

• Seigneur, N., Mayer, K. U., & Steefel, C. I. (2019). Reactive transport in evolving porous media. Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry, 85(1), 197-238.

• Seigneur, N., Lagneau, V., Corvisier, J., & Dauzères, A. (2018). Recoupling flow and chemistry in variably saturated reactive transport modelling-An algorithm to accurately couple the feedback of chemistry on water consumption, variable porosity and flow. Advances in Water Resources, 122, 355-366.

• Seigneur, N., L’Hôpital, E., Dauzères, A., Sammaljärvi, J., Voutilainen, M., Labeau, P. E., ... & Detilleux, V. (2017). Transport properties evolution of cement model system under degradation-Incorporation of a pore-scale approach into reactive transport modelling. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C, 99, 95-109.

• Seigneur, N., Dauzeres, A., Voutilainen, M., Detilleux, V., Labeau, P. E., & Dubus, A. (2017). Numerical representative elementary volume generation of a simplified cement paste and estimation of its diffusivity and comparison with dedicated experiments. Journal of Porous Media, 20(1).