Spontaneous imbibition of wetting liquids in porous media is a ubiquitous natural phenomenon which has received much attention in a wide variety of fields over several decades. Many traditional and recently presented capillary-driven flow models are derived based on Hagen-Poiseuille (H-P) flow in cylindrical capillaries. However, some limitations of these models have motivated modifications by taking into account different geometrical factors. In this work, a more generalized spontaneous imbibition model is developed by considering the different sizes and shapes of pores, the tortuosity of imbibition streamlines in random porous media, and the initial wetting-phase saturation. The interrelationships of accumulated imbibition weight, imbibition rate and gas recovery and the properties of the porous media, wetting liquids, and their interactions are derived analytically. A theoretical analysis and comparison denote that the presented equations can generalize several traditional and newly developed models from the literature. The proposed model was evaluated using previously published data for spontaneous imbibition measured in various natural and engineered materials including different rock types, fibrous materials, and silica glass. The test results show that the generalized model can be used to characterize the spontaneous imbibition behavior of many different porous media and that pore shape cannot always be assumed to be cylindrical.

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Fracture network and fractured porous media as well as their transport properties have received great attentions in many fields from engineering application and basic theoretical researches. Fracture will dynamically extend in length and aperture to form complex fracture network under some external conditions such as percussion drilling, wave propagation, desiccation and hydrofracturing. The complexity of fracture network can be well quantitatively characterized by fractal dimension. In this work, the dynamic characterization of fracture network extension in porous media under drying process is measured by the improved box-counting technique, and fractal dimensions of fracture network are respectively related to drying time, average aperture, moisture content and fracture porosity. The fractal dimension increases exponentially with drying time and average aperture, and decreases with moisture content in the form of power law. Specially, the fractal dimension is approximatively increased with porosity in the form of linearity in a narrow porosity range. The transport capacity of fracture network, described by seepage coefficient, is also related to the fractal dimension with drying time in the form of exponential function. The presented fractal analysis of fracture network could also shed light on the hydrofracturing application in subsurface unconventional oil and gas reservoirs.

Archie's equation is an empirical electrical conductivity‐porosity model that has been used to predict the formation factor of porous rock for more than 70 years. However, the physical interpretation of its parameters, e.g., the cementation exponent m, remains questionable. In this study, a theoretical electrical conductivity equation is derived based on the fractal characteristics of porous media. The proposed model is expressed in terms of the tortuosity fractal dimension (DT), the pore fractal dimension (Df), the electrical conductivity of the pore liquid, and the porosity. The empirical parameter m is then determined from physically based parameters, such as DT and Df. Furthermore, a distinct interrelationship between DT and Df is obtained. We find a reasonably good match between the predicted formation factor by our model and experimental data.