Effects of Pore-Scale Disorder on Fluid Displacement in Partially-Wettable Porous Media

Abstract

We present a systematic, quantitative assessment of the impact of pore size disorder and its interplay with flow rates and wettability on immiscible displacement of a viscous fluid. Pore-scale simulations and micromodel experiments show that reducing disorder increases the displacement efficiency and compactness, minimizing the fluid-fluid interfacial area, through (i) trapping at low rates and (ii) viscous fingering at high rates. Increasing the wetting angle suppresses both trapping and fingering, hence reducing the sensitivity of the displacement to the underlying disorder. A modified capillary number $\mathrm{C}{\mathrm{a}}^{\ast }$ that includes the impact of disorder $\lambda$ on viscous forces (through pore connectivity) is direct related to $\lambda$, in par with previous works. Our findings bear important consequences on sweep efficiency and fluid mixing and reactions, which are key in applications such as microfluidics to carbon geosequestration, energy recovery, and soil aeration and remediation.

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• Fluid Mixing from Viscous Fingering
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Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Tuning capillary flow in porous media with hierarchical structures
• Vortices of Electro-osmotic Flow in Heterogeneous Porous Media
• Characteristics of fluid-fluid displacement in model mixed-wet porous media: patterns, pressures, and scalings
• X-ray Tomographic Micro-Particle Velocimetry in Porous Media
• Pore-scale Modelling of Gravity-driven Drainage in Disordered Porous Media