Vahid Joekar-Niasar

Micromodel study of two‐phase flow under transient conditions: Quantifying effects of specific interfacial area

Recent computational studies of two-phase flow suggest that the role of fluid-fluid interfaces should be explicitly included in the capillarity equation as well as equations of motion of phases. The aim of this study has been to perform experiments where transient movement of interfaces can be monitored and to determine interfacial variables and quantities under transient conditions. We have performed two-phase flow experiments in a transparent micromodel. Specific interfacial area is defined, and calculated from experimental data, as the ratio of the total area of interfaces between two phases per unit volume of the porous medium. Recent studies have shown that all drainage and imbibition data points for capillary pressure, saturation, and specific interfacial area fall on a unique surface. But, up to now, almost all micromodel studies of two-phase flow have dealt with quasi-static or steady state flow conditions. Thus, only equilibrium properties have been studied. We present the first study of two-phase flow in an elongated PDMS micromodel under transient conditions with high temporal and spatial resolutions. We have established that different relationships between capillary pressure, saturation, and specific interfacial area are obtained under steady state and transient conditions. The difference between the surfaces depends on the capillary number. Furthermore, we use our experimental results to obtain average (macroscale) velocity of fluid-fluid interfaces and the rate of change of specific interfacial area as a function of time and space. Both terms depend on saturation nonlinearly but show a linear dependence on the rate of change of saturation. We also determine macroscale material coefficients that appear in the equation of motion of fluid-fluid interfaces. This is the first time that these parameters are determined experimentally. Key Points Specific interfacial area depends on dynamic conditions Interfacial velocity and production term show similar trends Further investigation of the dynamic conditions and of all interfaces is needed

Effects of intermediate wettability on entry capillary pressure in angular pores

Entry capillary pressure is one of the most important factors controlling drainage and remobilization of the capillary-trapped phases as it is the limiting factor against the two-phase displacement. It is known that the entry capillary pressure is rate dependent such that the inertia forces would enhance entry of the non-wetting phase into the pores. More importantly the entry capillary pressure is wettability dependent. However, while the movement of a meniscus into a strongly water-wet pore is well-defined, the invasion of a meniscus into a weak or intermediate water-wet pore especially in the case of angular pores is ambiguous. In this study using OpenFOAM software, high-resolution direct two-phase flow simulations of movement of a meniscus in a single capillary channel are performed. Interface dynamics in angular pores under drainage conditions have been simulated under constant flow rate boundary condition at different wettability conditions. Our results shows that the relation between the half corner angle of pores and contact angle controls the temporal evolution of capillary pressure during the invasion of a pore. By deviating from pure water-wet conditions, a dip in the temporal evolution of capillary pressure can be observed which will be pronounced in irregular angular cross sections. That enhances the pore invasion with a smaller differential pressure. The interplay between the contact angle and pore geometry can have significant implications for enhanced remobilization of ganglia in intermediate contact angles in real porous media morphologies, where pores are very heterogeneous with small shape factors.

Experimental study on nonmonotonicity of Capillary Desaturation Curves in a 2‐D pore network

Immiscible displacement in a porous medium is important in many applications such as soil remediation and enhanced oil recovery. When gravitational forces are negligible, two-phase immiscible displacement at the pore level is controlled by capillary and viscous forces whose relative importance is quantified through the dimensionless capillary number Ca and the viscosity ratio M between liquid phases. Depending on the values of Ca and M, capillary fingering, viscous fingering, or stable displacement may be observed resulting in a variety of patterns affecting the phase entrapment. The Capillary Desaturation Curve (CDC), which represents the relationship between the residual oils saturation and Ca, is an important relation to describe the phase entrapment at a given Ca. In the present study, we investigate the CDC as influenced by the viscosity ratio. A comprehensive series of experiments using a high-resolution microscope and state-of-the-art micromodels were conducted. The CDCs were calculated and the effects of Ca and M on phase entrapments were quantified. The results show that CDCs are not necessarily monotonic for all M.

New insights on the complex dynamics of two-phase flow in porous media under intermediate-wet conditions

Multiphase flow in porous media is important in a number of environmental and industrial applications such as soil remediation, CO2 sequestration, and enhanced oil recovery. Wetting properties control flow of immiscible fluids in porous media and fluids distribution in the pore space. In contrast to the strong and weak wet conditions, pore-scale physics of immiscible displacement under intermediate-wet conditions is less understood. This study reports the results of a series of two-dimensional high-resolution direct numerical simulations with the aim of understanding the pore-scale dynamics of two-phase immiscible fluid flow under intermediate-wet conditions. Our results show that for intermediate-wet porous media, pore geometry has a strong influence on interface dynamics, leading to co-existence of concave and convex interfaces. Intermediate wettability leads to various interfacial movements which are not identified under imbibition or drainage conditions. These pore-scale events significantly influence macro-scale flow behaviour causing the counter-intuitive decline in recovery of the defending fluid from weak imbibition to intermediate-wet conditions.

Critical Role of the Immobile Zone in Non-Fickian Two-Phase Transport: A New Paradigm

Using a visualization setup, we characterized the solute transport in a micromodel filled with two fluid phases using direct, real-time imaging. By processing the time series of images of solute transport (dispersion) in a two fluid-phase filled micromodel, we directly delineated the change of transport hydrodynamics as a result of fluid-phase occupancy. We found that, in the water saturation range of 0.6-0.8, the macroscopic dispersion coefficient reaches its maximum value and the coefficient was 1 order of magnitude larger than that in single fluid-phase flow in the same micromodel. The experimental results indicate that this non-monotonic, non-Fickian transport is saturation- and flow-rate-dependent. Using real-time visualization of the resident concentration (averaged concentration over a representative elementary volume of the pore network), we directly estimated the hydrodynamically stagnant (immobile) zones and the mass transfer between mobile and immobile zones. We identified (a) the nonlinear contribution of the immobile zones to the non-Fickian transport under transient transport conditions and (b) the non-monotonic fate of immobile zones with respect to saturation under single and two fluid-phase conditions in a micromodel. These two findings highlight the serious flaws in the assumptions of the conventional mobile-immobile model (MIM), which is commonly used to characterize the transport under two fluid-phase conditions.

Hydro-dynamic Solute Transport under Two-Phase Flow Conditions

There are abundant examples of natural, engineering and industrial applications, in which “solute transport” and “mixing” in porous media occur under multiphase flow conditions. Current state-of-the-art understanding and modelling of such processes are established based on flawed and non-representative models. Moreover, there is no direct experimental result to show the true hydrodynamics of transport and mixing under multiphase flow conditions while the saturation topology is being kept constant for a number of flow rates. With the use of a custom-made microscope, and under well-controlled flow boundary conditions, we visualized directly the transport of a tracer in a Reservoir-on-Chip (RoC) micromodel filled with two immiscible fluids. This study provides novel insights into the saturation-dependency of transport and mixing in porous media. To our knowledge, this is the first reported pore-scale experiment in which the saturation topology, relative permeability, and tortuosity were kept constant and transport was studied under different dynamic conditions in a wide range of saturation. The critical role of two-phase hydrodynamic properties on non-Fickian transport and saturation-dependency of dispersion are discussed, which highlight the major flaws in parametrization of existing models.

MicroCT X-Ray Imaging of Hydrodynamic Dispersion under Steady-State Two-Phase Flow

Summary Transport, mixing, and mass exchange under two-phase flow conditions are complex processes, which have not been yet understood, while they are highly important for enhanced oil recovery applications. We performed high-resolution microCT X-ray imaging to visualise and estimate the transport of DI water in a steady-state two-phase (KI solution-fluorinert) flow glass beads system. The experiments were performed in the Diamond Light Source, UK. The preliminary results show clear signature of saturation and saturation topology on mixing and dispersion coefficient. The experimental results imply that hydrodynamic dispersion under two-phase flow should be physically integrated into the two-phase flow properties, which is not fully captured in the current state-of-the-art literature. The experiments establish the first foundation to utilise the advanced fast microtomography X-ray imaging to understand the fundamentals of transport and mixing in two-phase systems, which are highly valuable for enhanced oil recovery applications.

Pore-scale modelling techniques: balancing efficiency, performance, and robustness

Pore-scale modelling is now a well-established progressive research field, which has significantly contributed to fundamental understanding of flow and transport in porous media in the last five decades. Examples can be (and not limited to) reservoir engineering [1–4], environmental hydrogeology [5], paper and pulp industry [6], fuel cells [7], biology, and medical science [8]. The first pore-scale model was developed by Fatt in 1956 [9], who simulated the capillary pressure curve as a function of saturation using a pore-network model. After this legendary work, pore-network models, mainly dominated by quasi-static pore-network models, were developed and applied to reservoir engineering and hydrogeology problems. The pore-network modelling opened up a new horizon in understanding the constitutive relations for two-phase flow such as capillary pressure and relative permeability curves [10, 11], and at a later stage exploring the transport phenomena in porous media [12]. With further technological developments in micromodel and X-ray imaging facilities and computational infrastructures, quantitative pore-network models were further developed [13]. Almost all pore-network models for different applications share the common principles: they require analytical or semianalytical solutions for a given specific research problem at the pore scale, meaning that the domain geometry requires