Abstract
AbstractWell defined experiments and numerical analyses are conducted to determine the importance of dynamic effect in capillary pressure relationships for two‐phase flow in porous media. Dynamic and quasi‐static capillary pressure‐saturation (Pc‐Sw) and, ∂Sw/∂t‐t curves are determined. These are then used to determine the dynamic effects, indicated by a dynamic coefficient (τ) in the porous domains which establishes the speed at which flow equilibrium (∂Sw/∂t = 0) is reached. τ is found to be a nonlinear function of saturation which also depends on the medium permeability. Locally determined τ seems to increase as the distance of the measurement point from the fluid inlet into the domain increases. However, the functional dependence τ‐Sw follows similar trends at different locations within the domain. We argue that saturation weighted average of local τ‐Sw curves can be defined as an effective τ‐Sw curve for the whole domain which follows an exponential trend too. © 2012 The Authors. AIChE Journal, published by Wiley on behalf of the AIChE. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. AIChE J, 58: 3891–3903, 2012
Highlights
To characterize a variety of industrial problems, one needs to quantify two-phase flow in porous media
As shown in the experimental results, the dynamic coefficient is a nonlinear function of water saturation and increases as water saturation decreases
The article is aimed at direct experimental determination of dynamic and quasi-static capillary pressure-saturation curves for two-phase flow in homogeneous porous medium three-dimensional (3D)
Summary
To characterize a variety of industrial problems (e.g., remediation of contaminated subsurface), one needs to quantify two-phase flow in porous media. Various authors have developed numerical schemes to quantify such flow behavior in which the relationships between capillary pressure (Pc) and water saturation (Sw) are needed. The Pc-Sw relationships are largely determined by well defined experiments in the laboratories using porous samples of 10–12 cm height. In these experiments, Pc is calculated by measuring the difference in average nonwetting (Pnw) and wetting (Pw) fluid phase pressures, expressed as a function of wetting phase saturation (Sw). The capillary pressure relationship in Eq 1 is defined to include a combined effect of all the factors that influence the equilibrium saturation distribution in the porous sample, namely, fluid properties (e.g., surface tension, viscosity, and density ratios), medium properties
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