Abstract
The spontaneous imbibition has been a subject of the scientific interest being a background process for numerous industrial technologies and occurring in the natural environment. In literature the experimental and theoretical results regarding this phenomenon describe a media imbibition with single-phase liquids and the relation between the process rate and media characteristics. The imbibition of oleophilic porous structures with two-phase liquids, only one phase of which was wetting, is an objective of the current publication. The main purpose is to estimate the influence of both surfactant fraction and the dispersed phase concentration on the mentioned process. The imbibition rate was investigated during model experiments with stabilized oil-in-water emulsions having the dispersed phase concentrations of 10 vol%, 30 vol% and 50 vol%. The prepared emulsions differed with fraction of the added surfactant, i.e. 1 vol%, 2 vol% and 5 vol%. The obtained results allowed to conclude that at the h im ≥0.02 m, the dispersed phase concentration and viscosity decreased versus height. However, the raise of the surfactant fraction caused the increase of mass and height of the imbibed emulsions in porous medium. Moreover, this provided increasing of viscosity and a change of emulsions behaviour as a liquid.
Highlights
The spontaneous imbibition is one type of liquid transport in porous structures which is driven by capillary pressure
The experimental data on the spontaneous imbibition presented in literature can be divided into the following groups: study of the dependence between the process rate and time [1, 5,6,7,8,9,10]; study of the relation between the characteristics of porous structure and the imbibition rate [1, 7,8,9]; and study of the effect of the penetrating liquid characteristics on this process [5, 6]
The process of porous structures imbibition with surfactant-stabilized emulsions depended on both the initial concentration of the inner phase and the surfactant fraction
Summary
The spontaneous imbibition is one type of liquid transport in porous structures which is driven by capillary pressure. The imbibition is known as a phenomenon occurring in the natural environment, i.e. hydrological regime in a soil matrix, migration processes in geology; plants seeds imbibition with water. Nowadays, it is applied in numerous industrial spheres: in the environmental engineering In addition to the above, the correlation between the surfactant fraction and the viscosity of the prepared emulsions was investigated
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