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Numerical investigation of two phase flow in micromodel porous media: effects of wettability, heterogeneity, and viscosity

Maaref, S ; Sharif University of Technology | 2017

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  1. Type of Document: Article
  2. DOI: 10.1002/cjce.22762
  3. Publisher: Wiley-Liss Inc , 2017
  4. Abstract:
  5. The aim of the present work is to assess the effects of wettability, heterogeneity, and viscosity differences on water-oil displacement process in micromodel porous media through numerical modelling. The two-phase flow was simulated by Cahn-Hilliard phase field method (PFM) using a finite element package. The micromodel was initially saturated with oil (wetting phase) and oil was produced through invasion of the displacing phase into the matrix. The computed oil and water saturations were in good agreement with those obtained by the visual flooding experiment. Using the validated model, sensitivity analysis was performed to investigate the effects of different wettability states, heterogeneity, and viscosity on the displacement process. The obtained results showed that the final oil saturation of the homogeneous pattern is 0.37 which is 13 % less than that of the heterogeneous one. For the highly oil-wet medium (θc=2π/3), the capillary forces prevented water to invade more pore bodies and resulted in 0.62 ultimate oil saturation; however, the final oil saturation in the neutral wet (θc=2π/3) was ∼0.5. Increasing the viscosity of displacing agent formed lower channelling and fingering which led to higher oil recovery due to the favourable mobility ratio. The present study demonstrates that PFM can be a reliable approach to capture micro- and macro-scale mechanisms in the simulation of immiscible two-phase flow in micromodel porous media with a reasonable computational time. © 2016 Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering
  6. Keywords:
  7. Two-phase flow ; Wetting ; Viscosity ratio ; Wettability ; Finite element method ; Phase transitions ; Porous materials ; Sensitivity analysis ; Viscosity ; Phase field method ; Computational time ; Displacement process ; Finite element packages ; Heterogeneity ; Immiscible two-phase flows ; Numerical investigations ; Phase field methods ; Viscosity ratios ; Two phase flow
  8. Source: Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering ; Volume 95, Issue 6 , 2017 , Pages 1213-1223 ; 00084034 (ISSN)
  9. URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/cjce.22762