Surface coating modification on a polyethylene separator serves as a promising way to meet the high requirements of thermal dimensional stability and excellent electrolyte wettability for lithium ion batteries (LIBs). In this paper, we report a new type of surface modified separator by coating polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) organic particles on traditional microporous polyethylene (PE) separators. The PE separator coated by PVDF particles (PE-PVDF separator) has higher porosity (61.4%), better electrolyte wettability (the contact angle to water was 3.28° ± 0.21°) and superior ionic conductivity (1.53 mS/cm) compared with the bare PE separator (51.2%, 111.3° ± 0.12°, 0.55 mS/cm). On one hand, the PVDF organic polymer has excellent organic electrolyte compatibility. On the other hand, the PVDF particles contain sub-micro spheres, of which the separator can possess a large specific surface area to absorb additional electrolyte. As a result, LIBs assembled using the PE-PVDF separator showed better electrochemical performances. For example, the button cell using a PE-PVDF as the separator had a higher capacity retention rate (70.01% capacity retention after 200 cycles at 0.5 C) than the bare PE separator (62.5% capacity retention after 200 cycles at 0.5 C). Moreover, the rate capability of LIBs was greatly improved as well—especially at larger current densities such as 2 C and 5 C.

The low-permeability reservoirs are of heavy heterogeneity, low permeability, fine oil-water passages, strong resistance during flow, and the significant interaction between solid and liquid interfaces causes the flow of fluid in reservoir deviating from the Darcy's law. There is no agreement on the interaction between the various factors in seepage process and the influence of seepage law. The boundary layer exists when liquid flow in micro-tubes and nano-tubes, and the boundary layer decreases with the increase of driving force, and the maximum value of boundary layer ratio is equal to 1. Based on the capillary boundal model and the boundary layer theory, a new exponential seepage model for low permeability reservoirs was proposed. Some experiments of water flow with different pressure gradient were carried out in low permeability cores with permeability of 4 to 8 milidarcy in natural rock cores from an oilfield in China, and the nonlinear model is of good agreement with the single-phase water flooding experiments of these cores. The results demonstrate that the physical meaning of each parameter of the new model is clear and it can be applied to describe the nonlinear characteristics of low permeability reservoirs. The large driving force can overcome disadvantages in the developments of low permeability reservoirs.

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With the development of the international economy, the global demand for oil and gas resources has continued to increase in recent years. The development of high-permeability reservoirs has reached the middle and late stages, and resources are depleting. With the large-scale successful exploitation of tight oils in North America, low-permeability tight reservoirs have gradually become the main object of development. Compared with conventional reservoirs, tight reservoirs mainly develop nano- scale pore systems. It causes poor reservoir properties, high interlayer heterogeneity, low porosity and permeability, and generally no natural productivity in reservoirs. In tight reservoirs, the flow of oil-water phases is not affected by the scale, but also the wettability, they make the oil and water phases seepage more complicated. In this paper, the natural core of a tight reservoir in Daqing was selected. Experiments were carried out using two experimental methods: steady-state method and non-steady-state method. The characteristics of oil and water phases percolation in tight reservoirs were analyzed. The results by comparing the two experimental methods showed the steady state method is suitable for measuring the oil and water relative permeability curve of tight reservoirs.

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