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

Rabbani, Harris Sajjad; Niasar, Vahid; Pak, Tannaz; Shokri, Nima

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-04545-4

Cited by 92 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…1(c-d) indicates the pressure values normalized with respect to the outlet pressure. The direction of injection in all images is from bottom to top (Rabbani et al, 2017). oil/gas recovery.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Intermediate-wet conditions prevail extensively in many natural formations (Alyafei and Blunt, 2016), and only a few studies have focused on this issue (Iglauer et al, 2016). For instance, the co-existence of concave and convex interfaces occurring in intermediate-wet rock was demonstrated by using a 2D VOF simulation (Rabbani et al, 2017), which emanate from the interplay between the wetting characteristics and pore geometry (as illustrated in Fig. 3a).…”

Section: Local Interfacial Instabilities Under Intermediate-wet Condimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Both displacement patterns and local pore-scale filling events in capillary-dominated immiscible displacement are strongly affected by the wettability of the pore surfaces (Rücker et al, 2019).Wettability indicates the relative tendency of immiscible fluids to adhere to a solid surface, as well as directly controls the displacement patterns and the dynamics of displacement events (Cottin et al, 2011;Holtzman and Segre, 2015;Iglauer, 2017;AlRatrout et al, 2018;Hu et al, 2018;Avendano et al, 2019). Generally, the wetting conditions of a solid surface can be classified into strongly-wet, intermediatelywet, and weakly-wet according to the contact angle between two fluids at a solid surface (Iglauer et al, 2015;Rabbani et al, 2017). Based on the wettability of the invading fluid, immiscible displacements in porous media can be classified into imbibition, in which a wetting fluid invades an initially non-wetting fluid filled porous matrix, or drainage, where a non-wetting invading fluid displaces a wetting fluid from the pore space (Blunt, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Local instabilities during capillary-dominated immiscible displacement in porous media

et al. 2019

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Fully understanding the mechanism of pore-scale immiscible displacement dominated by capillary forces, especially local instabilities and their influence on flow patterns, is essential for various industrial and environmental applications such as enhanced oil recovery, CO 2 geo-sequestration and remediation of contaminated aquifers. It is well known that such immiscible displacement is extremely sensitive to the fluid properties and pore structure, especially the wetting properties of the porous medium which affect not only local interfacial instabilities at the micro-scale, but also displacement patterns at the macro-scale. In this review, local interfacial instabilities under three typical wetting conditions, namely Haines jump events during weakly-wetting drainage, snap-off events during strongly-wetting imbibition, and the coexistence of concave and convex interfaces under intermediate-wet condition, are reviewed to help understand the microscale physics and macroscopic consequences resulting in natural porous media.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Local Interfacial Instabilities Under Intermediate-wet Condimentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Local instabilities during capillary-dominated immiscible displacement in porous media

et al. 2019

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“…Several mechanisms are proposed to explain the incremental oil recovery associated with MEOR, among which are the reduction in the oil-water IFT and changes in the wettability of the system and selective plugging mechanism [10][11][12][13]. Numerous experimental and numerical studies have been conducted to understand the impact of wettability alteration and IFT reduction [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. Kowalewski et al [25] showed that the bacterial growth could both reduce IFT and alter the wettability state toward less oil-wet conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pore-scale investigation of selective plugging mechanism in immiscible two-phase flow using phase-field method

Sabooniha

Rokhforouz

Ayatollahi

2019

Oil Gas Sci. Technol. – Rev. IFP Energies nouvelles

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Biotechnology has had a major effect on improving crude oil displacement to increase petroleum production. The role of biopolymers and bio cells for selective plugging of production zones through biofilm formation has been defined. The ability of microorganisms to improve the volumetric sweep efficiency and increase oil recovery by plugging off high-permeability layers and diverting injection fluid to lower-permeability was studied through experimental tests followed by multiple simulations. The main goal of this research was to examine the selective plugging effect of hydrophobic bacteria cell on secondary oil recovery performance. In the experimental section, water and aqua solution of purified Acinetobacter strain RAG-1 were injected into an oil-saturated heterogeneous micromodel porous media. Pure water injection could expel oil by 41%, while bacterial solution injection resulted in higher oil recovery efficiency; i.e., 59%. In the simulation section, a smaller part of the heterogeneous geometry was employed as a computational domain. A numerical model was developed using coupled Cahn–Hilliard phase-field method and Navier–Stokes equations, solved by a finite element solver. In the non-plugging model, approximately 50% of the matrix oil is recovered through water injection. Seven different models, which have different plugging distributions, were constructed to evaluate the influences of selective plugging mechanism on the flow patterns. Each plugging module represents a physical phenomenon which can resist the displacing phase flow in pores, throats, and walls during Microbial-Enhanced Oil Recovery (MEOR). After plugging of the main diameter route, displacing phase inevitably exit from sidelong routes located on the top and bottom of the matrix. Our results indicate that the number of plugs occurring in the medium could significantly affect the breakthrough time. It was also observed that increasing the number of plugging modules may not necessarily lead to higher ultimate oil recovery. Furthermore, it was shown that adjacent plugs to the inlet caused flow patterns similar to the non-plugging model, and higher oil recovery factor than the models with farther plugs from the inlet. The obtained results illustrated that the fluids distribution at the pore-scale and the ultimate oil recovery are strongly dependent on the plugging distribution.

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“…In the past few years, increasing attention has been focused on the effects of disordered geometry on immiscible two-phase flow (Ferrari et al, 2015;Holtzman, 2016;Rabbani et al, 2017). The ordered and disordered porous media have clear differences in the behaviours and mechanisms of multiphase fluid displacement processes (Pak et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pore-scale modelling of gravity-driven drainage in disordered porous media

Cui

Liu

Dai

et al. 2019

International Journal of Multiphase Flow

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Multiphase flow through a porous medium involves complex interactions between gravity, wettability and capillarity during drainage process. In contrast to these factors, the effect of pore distribution on liquid retention is less understood. In particular, the quantitative correlation between the fluid displacement and level of disorder has not yet been established. In this work, we employ direct numerical simulation by solving the Navier-Stokes equations and using volume of fluid method to track the liquid-liquid interface during drainage in disordered porous media. The disorder of pore configuration is characterized by an improved index to capture small microstructural perturbation, which is pivotal for fluid displacement in porous media. Then, we focus on the residual volume and morphological characteristics of saturated zones after drainage and compare the effect of disorder under different wettability (i.e., the contact angle) and gravity (characterized by a modified Bond number) conditions. Pore-scale simulations reveal that the highly-disordered porous medium is favourable to improve liquid retention and provide various morphologies of entrapped saturated zones. Furthermore, the disorder index has a positive correlation to the characteristic curve index (n) in van Genuchten equation, controlling the shape of the retention characteristic curves. It is expected that the findings will benefit to a broad range of industrial applications involving drainage processes in porous media, e.g., drying, carbon sequestration, and underground water remediation.

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

Cited by 92 publications

References 36 publications

Local instabilities during capillary-dominated immiscible displacement in porous media

Local instabilities during capillary-dominated immiscible displacement in porous media

Pore-scale investigation of selective plugging mechanism in immiscible two-phase flow using phase-field method

Pore-scale modelling of gravity-driven drainage in disordered porous media

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