Characterization of Transport-Enhanced Phase Separation in Porous Media Using a Lattice-Boltzmann Method
- Parmigiani, Andrea Institute of Geochemistry and Petrology, ETH Zurich, Clausiusstrasse 25, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
- Di Palma, Paolo Roberto National Research Council of Italy, Water Research Institute, Area della Ricerca di Roma 1–Montelibretti, Strada Provinciale 35d, km 0.7 Montelibretti (Roma), Italy
- Leclaire, Sébastien ORCID Department of Mechanical Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal, 2500 chemin de Polytechnique, Quebec, Canada H3T 1J4
- Habib, Faraz ORCID Geothermal Energy and Geofluids Group, Institute of Geophysics, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
- Kong, Xiang-Zhao ORCID Geothermal Energy and Geofluids Group, Institute of Geophysics, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Published in:
- Geofluids. - Hindawi Limited. - 2019, vol. 2019, p. 1-13
English
Phase separation of formation fluids in the subsurface introduces hydrodynamic perturbations which are critical for mass and energy transport of geofluids. Here, we present pore-scale lattice-Boltzmann simulations to investigate the hydrodynamical response of a porous system to the emergence of non-wetting droplets under background hydraulic gradients. A wide parameter space of capillary number and fluid saturation is explored to characterize the droplet evolution, the droplet size and shape distribution, and the capillary-clogging patterns. We find that clogging is favored by high capillary stress; nonetheless, clogging occurs at high non-wetting saturation (larger than 0.3), denoting the importance of convective transport on droplet growth and permeability. Moreover, droplets are more sheared at low capillary number; however, solid matrix plays a key role on droplet’s volume-to-surface ratio.
- Language
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- English
- Open access status
- gold
- Identifiers
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- DOI 10.1155/2019/5176410
- ISSN 1468-8115
- Persistent URL
- https://sonar.ch/global/documents/93803
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