Wettability and Flow Rate Impacts on Immiscible Displacement: A Theoretical Model

Hu, Ran; Wan, Jiamin; Yang, Zhibing; Chen, Yi‐Feng; Tokunaga, Tetsu K.

doi:10.1002/2017gl076600

Cited by 129 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…1). Generally, stronger fingering and larger trapped area of defending fluid are observed when the medium becomes more disordered (increasing I v ) and more hydrophobic (increasing θ ), implying a less efficient displacement, consistent with previous observations [9][10][11][12][19][20][21]23,52]. Figure 3 also demonstrates the "competition" between the destabilizing effect due to uneven distribution of capillary resistance and stabilizing effect from cooperative pore filling events, which have a higher occurrence when contact angle is small.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

Disorder characterization of porous media and its effect on fluid displacement

et al. 2019

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We investigate the effects of topological disorder and wettability on fluid displacement in porous media. A modified disorder index I v is proposed to characterize the disorder of porous media. By changing I v , different displacement patterns (stable displacement and fingering) under the same flow condition and fluid property are obtained. We analytically demonstrate how increase in disorder promotes fingering due to uneven distribution of local capillary pressure. It is shown that the displacement efficiency for different wettability conditions and disorder well correlates with the distribution of local capillary pressure. A power-law relation between fluid-fluid interfacial length and saturation of invading fluid is proposed by taking geometry into account, where the parameters in power-law relation can be predicted by the capillary index, I c , unifying the effects of topological disorder and wettability.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

Disorder characterization of porous media and its effect on fluid displacement

et al. 2019

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“…Such transition from capillary to capillary‐viscous regimes occurs when the distance from injection wells decreases during water flooding in EOR (Arshadi et al, ; Rücker et al, ) and further identifies different pore‐scale mechanisms of fluid‐fluid interface advancements (Krevor et al, ). In capillary imbibition, studies on pore‐scale events, including Haines jump (Haines, ), corner flow (Dong & Chatzis, ), and snap off (Roof, ), have shown that the pore‐scale mechanisms not only impact the displacement patterns and efficiency (Chen, Guo, et al, ; Hu et al, ; Odier et al, ) but also contribute to the macroscopic hydraulic properties at the Darcy scale (Niessner et al, ). For capillary‐viscous regime in imbibition, these local displacement events would be suppressed as viscous forces increasingly dominate the displacement processes (Odier et al, ; Zhao et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy Conversion Reveals Regime Transition of Imbibition in a Rough Fracture

Yang

et al. 2018

Geophysical Research Letters

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As externally imposed flow rate increases during imbibition, viscous force increasingly dominates displacement over capillarity and imbibition shifts from capillary to capillary‐viscous regimes. Previous studies focused on capillary regime, lacking a fundamental understanding of regime transition. Here we study the imbibition transition via flow rate‐controlled experiments in a rough fracture. By analyzing energy balance in multiphase flow system, we find a fundamental link between regime transition and energy conversion. In capillary regime, surface energy is partially transformed into external work and an amount of 51−58% is dissipated via local rapid, irreversible events; while in capillary‐viscous regime, surface energy together with external work is transformed into kinetic and dissipated energies. This transition, corresponding to critical capillary number, is evidenced by quantitative analysis of invasion morphologies. Our work bridges the gap between energy conversion/dissipation and multiphase flow and has important implications for identifying imbibition regimes in enhanced oil recovery and geological CO2 sequestration.

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“…Compared with the pattern for the strong drainage condition (Figure ), we see that generally, the invading phase is more compact in the weak drainage case. This behavior is due to the interface‐smoothening effect of the in‐plane curvature (Glass et al, ; Yang et al, ), which is analogous to the stabilization effect due to cooperative filling in porous media (Holtzman & Segre, ; Hu, Wan, et al, ; Trojer et al, ). In fact, the simulated patterns with the strong viscosity contrast ( M = 0.005) for both the strong and weak drainage cases qualitatively resemble those observed in the experiment by Trojer et al () where M = 0.003.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling Immiscible Two‐Phase Flow in Rough Fractures From Capillary to Viscous Fingering

Yang

Méheust

Neuweiler

et al. 2019

Water Resources Research

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We develop an efficient computational model for simulating fluid invasion patterns emerging in variable aperture fractures. This two‐dimensional model takes into account the effect of capillary force on the fluid‐fluid interfaces and viscous pressure drop in both fluid phases. The pressure distribution is solved at each time step based on mass balance and local cubic law, considering an imposed pressure jump condition at the fluid‐fluid interface. This pressure jump corresponds to the Laplace pressure which includes both terms related to the out‐of‐plane (aperture‐spanning) curvature and to the in‐plane curvature. Simulating a configuration that emulates viscous fingering in two‐dimensional random porous media confirms that the model accounts properly for the role of viscous forces. Furthermore, direct comparison with previously obtained experimental results shows that the model reproduces the observed drainage patterns in a rough fracture reasonably well. The evolutions of tip location, the inlet pressures, and the invading phase fractal dimensions are analyzed to characterize the transition from capillary fingering to viscous fingering regimes. A radial injection scenario of immiscible invasion is also studied with varying modified capillary number and viscosity ratio, showing displacement patterns ranging from capillary fingering to viscous fingering to stable displacement. Such simulations using two contact angles show that the invading phase becomes more compact when the wetting condition changes from strong to weak drainage, as already observed in 2‐D porous media. The model can be used to bridge the gap in spatial scales of two‐phase flow between pore‐scale modeling approaches and the continuum Darcy‐scale models.

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Wettability and Flow Rate Impacts on Immiscible Displacement: A Theoretical Model

Cited by 129 publications

References 48 publications

Disorder characterization of porous media and its effect on fluid displacement

Disorder characterization of porous media and its effect on fluid displacement

Energy Conversion Reveals Regime Transition of Imbibition in a Rough Fracture

Modeling Immiscible Two‐Phase Flow in Rough Fractures From Capillary to Viscous Fingering

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