Wettability and Lenormand's diagram

Primkulov, Bauyrzhan K.; Pahlavan, Amir A.; Fu, Xiaojing; Zhao, Benzhong; MacMinn, Christopher W.; Juanes, Rubén

doi:10.1017/jfm.2021.579

Cited by 71 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…It was also interesting to find that the experimental observations were consistent with the results by the modified network models (Primkulov et al. 2018, 2019, 2021), which indicated that the critical wettability for best displacement generally corresponded to the cooperative pore-filling mode.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 71%

Non-monotonic wettability effects on displacement in heterogeneous porous media

Lei

Lu²,

Liu³

et al. 2022

J. Fluid Mech.

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We report non-monotonic wettability effects on displacement efficiency in heterogeneous porous structures at the post-breakthrough stage, in contrast to the monotonic ones in homogeneous porous structures. Experiments on designed microfluidic chips show that there exists a critical wettability to attain the highest efficiency of displacement in the porous matrix structure combined with a preferential flow pathway, while a stronger wettability of the displacing fluid leads to a higher displacement efficiency on the same matrix structure only. The porous structure with or without a preferential flow pathway results in totally different topological characteristics of phase distribution during displacement. Pore-scale mechanisms are identified to elucidate the formation of this non-monotonic wettability rule: cooperative pore filling under weakly water-wet conditions yields the best displacement; corner flow under strongly water-wet conditions and Haines events under strongly oil-wet conditions decrease the displacement efficiency. The pore-scale findings may provide unique insights into the joint effects of both wettability and flow heterogeneity on fluid displacement in porous media.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 71%

Non-monotonic wettability effects on displacement in heterogeneous porous media

Lei

Lu²,

Liu³

et al. 2022

J. Fluid Mech.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…2017; Primkulov et al. 2018, 2019, 2021). As the solid becomes more wetting to the invading fluid, i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emergence of unstable invasion during imbibition in regular porous media

et al. 2022

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The unstable fluid–fluid displacement patterns in porous media with rough invasion fronts and trapping of the defending phase are often observed in drainage, i.e. when the solid is non-wetting to the invading phase. On the other hand, during imbibition, compact and faceted growth is expected in regular porous media with geometrically homogeneous pore structure. Here, we report the irregular growth of invading fluid during the imbibition process in two-dimensional regular porous media. The ramified invasion morphology associated with thin fingers is reminiscent of capillary fingering. Through examining the capillary pressure signals and the type of pore-scale invasion mechanisms, the fundamental differences between faceted growth and irregular invasion are revealed. By analysing the pore-scale invasion mechanisms, a phase diagram describing the dominance of different invasion events is proposed. Through conducting systematic quasi-static radial injection simulations across a wide range of porosity and wettability, excellent agreement is observed on the transition boundary from faceted and compact displacement patterns to irregular and dendritic invasion morphologies. This is reflected by the overlap of the transition boundaries from analytical prediction, type of pore-scale invasion events, and macroscopic morphology quantified by the fractal dimension. This work provides new insights on the role of geometrical features of solid structures during multiphase flow with emphasis on the porosity and wettability. The findings could assist in guiding the design of microfluidic devices to control deterministically the multiphase flow, transport and reaction processes.

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“…PN not only improves the computational efficiency but also considers the variation of Laplace pressure. By solving the Hagen‐Poiseuille equation in the resolution at the level of the pore, PN can simulate fluid invasions on the order of a minute, which may require parallel computing lasting for several days for other simulation techniques (Holtzman & Segre, 2015; Hu, Lan, et al., 2019; Primkulov et al., 2021; Zhao et al., 2019), such as VOF, lattice Boltzmann method (Jiang & Tsuji, 2015, 2016; Jiang et al., 2014, 2022; Liu et al., 2015), and computational fluid dynamics (Ferrari et al., 2015; Hu et al., 2017). However, for large‐scale fluid invasion, the computational efficiency needs to be further improved.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%