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Updated: Sep 22, 2025

Chemical Gardens as Flow-through Reactors Simulating Natural Hydrothermal Systems
Published on: November 18, 2015
Archimedean Spirals Form at Low Flow Rates in Confined Chemical Gardens
Luis A M Rocha1, Lewis Thorne1, Jasper J Wong1
1Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3RA, U.K.
Abstract:
We describe and study the formation of confined chemical garden patterns. At low flow rates of injection of cobalt chloride solution into a Hele-Shaw cell filled with sodium silicate, the precipitate forms with a thin filament wrapping around an expanding "candy floss" structure. The result is the formation of an Archimedean spiral structure. We model the growth of the structure mathematically. We estimate the effective density of the precipitate and calculate the membrane permeability. We set the results within the context of recent experimental and modeling work on confined chemical garden filaments.
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