Immiscible liquid–liquid pressure-driven flow in capillary tubes: Experimental results and numerical comparison

Abstract

The immiscible displacement of one viscous liquid by another in a capillary tube is experimentally and numerically analyzed in the low inertia regime with negligible buoyancy effects. The dimensionless numbers that govern the problem are the capillary number Ca and the viscosity ratio of the displaced to the displacing fluids Nμ. In general, there are two output quantities of interest. One is associated to the relation between the front velocity, Ub, and the mean velocity of the displaced fluid, Ū2. The other is the layer thickness of the displaced fluid that remains attached to the wall. We compute these quantities as mass fractions in order to make them able to be compared. In this connection, the efficiency mass fraction, me, is defined as the complement of the mass fraction of the displaced fluid that leaves the tube while the displacing fluid crosses its length. The geometric mass fraction, mg, is defined as the fraction of the volume of the layer that remains attached to the wall. Because in gas–liquid displacement, these two quantities coincide, it is not uncommon in the literature to use mg as a measure of the displacement efficiency for liquid–liquid displacements. However, as is shown in the present paper, these two quantities have opposite tendencies when we increase the viscosity of the displacing fluid, making this distinction a crucial aspect of the problem. Results from a Galerkin finite element approach are also presented in order to make a comparison. Experimental and numerical results show that while the displacement efficiency decreases, the geometrical fraction increases when the viscosity ratio decreases. This fact leads to different decisions depending on the quantity to be optimized. The quantitative agreement between the numerical and experimental results was not completely achieved, especially for intermediate values of Ca. The reasons for that are still under investigation. The experiments conducted were able to achieve a wide range of Ca. We show that in the range 1 < Nμ < 2, wavy shape instabilities appear at the interface and that increasing capillary number the amplitude of those waves increases. A deeper investigation on the operation window where these instabilities occur is in order.