A noble method for rapid prototyping of porous micromodels applicable to enhanced oil recovery

Abstract

In this paper, a noble method for rapid prototyping of porous micromodel in Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) with good control over the pore geometry is described. An attempt has been made to demonstrate the making of PDMS micromodels using round hole perforated metal sheet as a master. The geometric shape of the micromodel in PDMS is the negative of the perforated sheet, which gives a section of cylindrical pillars separated by a uniform gap. After peeling off the PDMS from the porous plate, it is sealed with a glass plate to prepare the microfluidic porous channel. This protocol requires only materials that are commercially available, inexpensive and less time consuming. The size of the pores can be adjusted by selecting the perforated sheets having different hole size and thus micromodels with a variety of pore size distribution can be generated using this simple method. The optical visualization experiments were performed to test these fabricated micromodels for their applicability and reliability. Furthermore, Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) technique is used to get the velocity distribution along the porous section of the micromodel. Identical flow patterns were seen at the different section of the micromodel which again indicated the reliablility of these homogeneous micromodel fabricated by using this noble method. In addition, the velocity profiles are obtained near the throat region of the micromodel at three different flow rates.