Linking pressure and saturation through interfacial areas in porous media

Cheng, Jiangtao; Pyrak‐Nolte, L. J.; Nolte, David D.; Giordano, N.

doi:10.1029/2003gl019282

Cited by 110 publications

(116 citation statements)

References 15 publications

(15 reference statements)

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“…These curves are all found to be hysteretic. In the recent experiments by Cheng et al (2004), a nw -P c -S w surfaces are obtained. They find that the drainage and imbibition surfaces have a difference of only 2.77%.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3. There are some experimental studies where a nw -S w curves are produced (see, e.g., Cheng et al 2004;Chen and Kibbey 2006). These curves are all found to be hysteretic.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Aqueous tracers have been used by Karkare and Fort (1996), Brusseau et al (1997), Kim et al (1997), Saripalli et al (1998), Anwar (2000), Schaefer et al (2000), and Chen and Kibbey (2006), and gas tracers have been used in some other studies such as Kim et al (1999), Costanza-Robinson and Brusseau (2002), and Brusseau et al (2006). Imaging techniques have been used by Montemagno and Gray (1995), Wildenschild et al (2002), Cheng et al (2004), Culligan et al (2004), Al-Raoush and Willson (2005a,b), and Brusseau (2005, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Insights into the Relationships Among Capillary Pressure, Saturation, Interfacial Area and Relative Permeability Using Pore-Network Modeling

2007

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To gain insight in relationships among capillary pressure, interfacial area, saturation, and relative permeability in two-phase flow in porous media, we have developed two types of pore-network models. The first one, called tube model, has only one element type, namely pore throats. The second one is a sphere-and-tube model with both pore bodies and pore throats. We have shown that the two models produce distinctly different curves for capillary pressure and relative permeability. In particular, we find that the tube model cannot reproduce hysteresis. We have investigated some basic issues such as effect of network size, network dimension, and different trapping assumptions in the two networks. We have also obtained curves of fluid-fluid interfacial area versus saturation. We show that the trend of relationship between interfacial area and saturation is largely influenced by trapping assumptions. Through simulating primary and scanning drainage and imbibition cycles, we have generated two surfaces fitted to capillary pressure, saturation, and interfacial area (P c -S w -a nw ) points as well as to relative permeability, saturation, and interfacial area (k r -S w -a nw ) points. The two fitted three-dimensional surfaces show very good correlation with the data points. We have fitted two different surfaces to P c -S w -a nw points for drainage and imbibition separately. The two surfaces do not completely coincide. But, their mean absolute difference decreases with increasing overlap in the statistical distributions of pore bodies and pore throats. We have shown that interfacial area can be considered as an essential variable for diminishing or eliminating the hysteresis observed in capillary pressure-saturation (P c -S w ) and the relative permeability-saturation (k r -S w ) curves.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3. There are some experimental studies where a nw -S w curves are produced (see, e.g., Cheng et al 2004;Chen and Kibbey 2006). These curves are all found to be hysteretic.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Insights into the Relationships Among Capillary Pressure, Saturation, Interfacial Area and Relative Permeability Using Pore-Network Modeling

2007

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“…[60] As it was mentioned above, theoretical, numerical, and experimental results have shown that it is crucially important to include interfacial area for a complete description of two-phase flow in porous media [see e.g., Gray, 1990, 1993b;Held and Celia, 2001;Cheng et al, 2004;Joekar-Niasar et al, 2010b;Hassanizadeh, 2011, 2012].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[5] Recently, two-phase flow studies were performed using photo-resist micromodels that had flow patterns based on stratified percolation [Cheng, 2002;Pyrak-Nolte et al, 2008;Cheng et al, 2004Cheng et al, , 2007Liu et al, 2011]. In these studies, distributions of the two phases in the flow network during quasi-static drainage and imbibition were visualized.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the fabrication of PDMS micromodels by rapid prototyping, and their use in two‐phase flow studies

Karadimitriou

Musterd

Kleingeld

et al. 2013

Water Resources Research

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[1] Micromodels have been increasingly employed in various ways in porous media research, to study the pore-scale behavior of fluids. Micromodels have proven to be a valuable tool by allowing the observation of flow and transport at the micron scale in chemical, biological, and physical applications. They have helped to improve our insight of flow and transport phenomena at both microscale and macroscale. Up to now, most micromodels that have been used to study the role of interfaces in two-phase flow were small, square, or nearly square domains. In this work, an elongated PDMS micromodel, bearing a flow network with dimensions 5Â30 mm 2 was manufactured. The pore network was designed such that the REV size was around 5Â7 mm 2 . So, our flow network was considered to be nearly four times the REV size. Using such micromodels, we established that the inclusion of interfacial area between the wetting and the nonwetting fluids models the hysteretic relationship between capillary pressure and saturation in porous media. In this paper, we first present the procedure for manufacturing PDMS micromodels with the use of soft lithography. Then, we describe an innovative and novel optical setup that allows the real-time visualization of elongated samples. Finally, we present the results obtained by quasi-static, two-phase flow experiments.

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

Karadimitriou

Hassanizadeh

Niasar

et al. 2014

Water Resources Research

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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.

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Linking pressure and saturation through interfacial areas in porous media

Cited by 110 publications

References 15 publications

Insights into the Relationships Among Capillary Pressure, Saturation, Interfacial Area and Relative Permeability Using Pore-Network Modeling

Insights into the Relationships Among Capillary Pressure, Saturation, Interfacial Area and Relative Permeability Using Pore-Network Modeling

On the fabrication of PDMS micromodels by rapid prototyping, and their use in two‐phase flow studies

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

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