Flow of oil nanoclusters in a porous medium capillary

Abstract

In the article, we consider movement of hydrophilic and hydrophobic liquids in a capillary. It is known that structure of flow of such fluids depends on set of conditions. The issue of correct choice of control parameters is of great importance for controlling the transition of the flow into different modes. The most important issue in the filtration problem is morphological stability of displacement front during filtration. It is generally assumed that it is sufficient to control the capillary number to change the flow regimes. The article shows that another parameter can be singled out, which is the disjoining pressure. If mechanisms of influence on wedging pressure can be found, then it is possible to control effectively flow by changing thickness of jet and to control the process of clustering (splitting of jet into droplets). In the article, it is shown that such mechanism can be interaction of hydrocarbon molecules with nanoparticles.