Sharif Digital Repository

During miscible displacements in fractured porous media, one of the most important factors that plays a significant role in oil production is the matrix-fracture interaction. In this work, a series of hydrocarbon injection experiments have been performed on a fractured glass micromodel that was designed specifically to study matrix-fracture interaction. A high quality image analysis method was used to determine the fluid flow behavior, solvent front movement, and viscous fingering associated with solvent movement in matrix and fractures. Observations showed that in the case of unit viscosity ratio, the injection rate increased the slope of recovery curve and consequently improved the final... 

Finger initiation/development at fluid-fluid interface during miscible floods can cause poor displacement efficiency, which is undesirable in enhanced oil recovery processes. In this work, a series of hydrocarbon injection experiments performed on 5-spot glass micromodels that were initially saturated with the heavy crude oil. The fractured micromodels with different fracture geometrical characteristics were used in the tests. High quality image analysis was applied to determine the fluid flow behavior, solvent front movement, and viscous fingering associated with solvent movement in matrix and fractures. Observations showed that higher solvent dispersion in the fractures rather than matrix... 

Finger initiation/development at fluid-fluid interface during miscible floods can cause poor displacement efficiency, which is undesirable in enhanced oil recovery processes. In this work, a series of hydrocarbon injection experiments performed on 5-spot glass micromodels that were initially saturated with the heavy crude oil. The fractured micromodels with different fracture geometrical characteristics were used in the tests. High quality image analysis was applied to determine the fluid flow behavior, solvent front movement, and viscous fingering associated with solvent movement in matrix and fractures. Observations showed that higher solvent dispersion in the fractures rather than matrix... 

In this work, a series of solvent- and water-injection scenarios were conducted on horizontal five-spot glass micromodels that were saturated initially with heavy oil. Sandstone and limestone rock look-alike and network patterns with different pore structures were used in the experiments. The results show that the ultimate oil recovery of a water-alternating-solvent (WAS) scheme was greater than that of a simultaneously water-alternating-solvent (SWAS) scheme, and the efficiency of a solvent-soak scheme also offers a greater recovery. Likewise, the WAS scheme resulted in greater oil recovery when compared with continuous solvent injection (CSI), with the same amount of solvent consumption.... 

Characterization of viscous fingering in low tension displacements especially for heavy oil surfactant pair in heterogeneous systems is neither straight forward nor well understood. In this work layered porous models containing fractures with different geometrical properties were used and the finger behavior during displacement of LTNS, as a new EOR agent, in heavy oil was quantified. Dynamic propagation of the fingers independent to the type of heterogeneity is well correlated with the dimensionless displacement time in a linearly form. And also, the rate of finger growth is nearly independent to the type of medium heterogeneity. When injection is scheduled through high permeable region in... 

Dyslipidemia is considered to be one of the main heart risk factors, affecting the endothelial vascular function, which can be non-invasively investigated by ultrasound flow-mediated dilation (US-FMD). However, US-FMD comes at a high-cost and is operator-dependent. In this paper, the effect of dyslipidemia on the photoplethysmogram (PPG) signal recorded from collateral index fingers is investigated following a previous study where it was shown that results similar to that of US-FMD can be replicated by the PPG. Two groups, consisting of 30 healthy subjects free from any risk factors and 30 subjects who have only dyslipidemia as risk factor were respectively considered. The percent change in... 

In order to relate the wetting properties at the pore scale to the macroscale prevailing forces, a series of experiments was performed in vertical porous media under forced gas invasion at various wettability conditions with partially spreading oil. To describe the dynamics of oil recovery in a three-phase flow condition, the downward gas flood experiments were continued by water injection from the bottom. Experimental results obtained in situations where the magnitudes of viscous, capillary, and gravity forces are comparable. We study the transition from flow configurations where the interface is stable with respect to viscous instability to flow configurations where viscous fingering... 

Self-sufficient power sources provide a promising application of abundant electronic devices utilized in detection of ambient properties. Recently, triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have been widely investigated to broaden the self-powered systems by converting the ambient mechanical agitations into electrical voltage and current. Graphene oxide (GO), not only for sensing applications but also as a brilliant energy-related nanomaterial, provides a wide range of controllable bandgap energies, as well as facile synthesis route. In this study, GO-based self-powered photodetectors have been fabricated by conflating the photosensitivity and triboelectric characteristics of freestanding GO... 

Atherosclerosis is a major cause of coronary artery disease leading to morbidity and mortality worldwide. Currently, coronary angiography is considered to be the most accurate technique to diagnose coronary artery disease (CAD). However, this technique is an invasive and expensive procedure with risks of serious complications. Since the symptoms of CAD are not noticed until advanced stages of the disease, early and effective diagnosis of CAD is considered a pertinent measure. In this paper, a non-invasive optical signal, the finger photoplethysmogram (PPG) obtained before and after reactive hyperemia is investigated to discriminate between subjects with different CAD conditions. To this end,... 

Increasing the number of car accidents and other cerebral disease cause to progress in using Brain-Compute Interface (BCI) as a common subject for research and treatment. The aim of Brain-Computer Interface system is to establish a new communication system that translates human intentions, reflected by brain signals, into a control signal for an output device such as a computer. To this end, different processes must be done on brain signals and these signals must be classified by suitable methods. There are various methods to classify ECoG signals which are different in features and classifiers. Used features depend on extracted features, feature reduction methods and measures of feature... 

Spontaneous imbibition is well-known to be one of the most effective processes of oil recovery in fractured reservoirs. However, the detailed pore-scale mechanisms of the counter-current imbibition process and the effects of different fluid/rock parameters on this phenomenon have not yet been deeply addressed. Thiswork presents the results of a newpore-level numerical study of counter-current spontaneous imbibition, using coupled Cahn-Hilliard phase field and Navier-Stokes equations, solved by a finite element method. A 2D fractured medium was constructed consisting of a nonhomogeneous porous matrix, in which the grains were represented by an equilateral triangular array of circles with... 

Characterization of the transcritical coaxial injectors, accounting for the geometrical features and thermodynamics nonlinearities, is of both practical and fundamental importance. In the present study, the interactions and effects of turbulent mixing and pseudo-boiling phenomena are investigated. To do this, the mixing dynamics of bi-shear jets injected under trans- and supercritical conditions has been investigated numerically using the large-eddy simulation technique. The numerical framework provides real-gas thermodynamics and transport properties, using the Peng-Robinson equation-of-state and Chung's models, respectively. The obtained flow quantities are in good agreement with the... 

Ageing is one of the main contributing factors towards increasing arterial stiffness, leading to changes in peripheral pulses propagation. Therefore the characteristics of the photoplethysmogram (PPG) pulse, especially the rising edge and peak position, are greatly affected. In this study, the PPG pulse rising edge and corresponding peak position have been investigated non-invasively in human subjects as a function of age. Fifteen healthy subjects were selected and grouped in five age intervals, from 20 to 59 years, based on their comparable systolic-diastolic blood pressure and PPG amplitude. As expected, the peripheral pulse shows a steep rise and early peak in younger subjects. With age,... 

Oil trapping behavior during the pre-flush stage is critically important to evaluate the effectiveness of matrix acidizing for the oil well stimulation. In this study, the visco-capillary behavior of the two-phase flow in the pore-scale is analyzed to investigate the influence of wetting properties for a natural rock sample. A two-dimensional model, based on Cahn-Hilliard phase-field and Navier-Stokes equations, was established and solved using the finite element method. A stability phase diagram for log capillary number (Ca)-log viscosity ratio (M) was constructed and then compared with the reported experimental works. The maximum and minimum ranges of capillary number and viscosity ratio... 

Many heavy oil reservoirs contain discontinuous shales which act as barriers or baffles to flow. However, there is a lack of fundamental understanding about how the shale geometrical characteristics affect the reservoir performance, especially during polymer flooding of heavy oils. In this study, a series of polymer injection processes have been performed on five-spot glass micromodels with different shale geometrical characteristics that are initially saturated with the heavy oil. The available geological characteristics from one of the Iranian oilfields were considered for the construction of the flow patterns by using a controlled-laser technology. Oil recoveries as a function of pore...