We design and fabricate elastically tunable monodisperse microcapsules using microfluidics and cross-linkable polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The overall stiffness of the microcapsules is governed by both the thickness and cross-link ratio of the polymer shell. Flowing suspensions of microcapsules through constricted spaces leads to transient blockage of fluid flow, thus altering the flow behavior. The ability to tune microcapsule mechanical properties enables the design of elastic microcapsules that can be tailored for desired flow behavior in a broad range of applications such as oil recovery, reactor feeding, red blood cell flow and chemical targeted delivery.

Wettability has a dramatic impact on fluid displacement in porous media. The pore level physics of one liquid being displaced by another is a strong function of the wetting characteristics of the channel walls. However, the quantification of the effect is still not clear. Conflicting data have shown that in some oil displacement experiments in rocks, the volume of trapped oil falls as the porous media becomes less water-wet, while in some microfluidic experiments the volume of residual oil is higher in oil-wet media. The reasons for this discrepancy are not fully understood. In this study, we analyzed oil displacement by water injection in two microfluidic porous media with different wettability characteristics that had capillaries with constrictions. The resulting oil ganglia size distribution at the end of water injection was quantified by image processing. The results show that in the oil-wet porous media, the displacement front was more uniform and the final volume of remaining oil was smaller, with a much smaller number of large oil ganglia and a larger number of small oil ganglia, when compared to the water-wet media.

and available online here Cet article fait partie du dossier thématique ci-dessous publié dans la revue OGST, Vol. 67, n°6, pp. 883-1039 et téléchargeable ici

No abstract

We consider the displacement, in a rectangular channel, of a Newtonian oil pushed by different types of liquids (Newtonian, shear-thinning, viscoelastic) of slightly higher apparent viscosity. In the absence of viscoelastic effects the interface between the two fluids becomes sharper at larger velocities, so that the thickness of the lateral film left behind increases with the flow rate. On the contrary, with a viscoelastic fluid, the shape of the interface is almost independent of the velocity so that the thickness of the lateral film is approximately constant. Moreover this thickness decreases when the ratio of normal to tangential stresses increases, suggesting that this effect can be attributed to normal stress differences. A heuristic theoretical approach tends to confirm this statement.