Multi-scale Optical Analyses of Dynamic Gas Saturation During Air Sparging into Glass Beads

Abstract

A multi-scale optical imaging technique was developed allowing for the 2D observation of two phase flow in porous media at two different scales simultaneously: Using two coupled cameras, a 2D flow cell (0.5 × 0.5m2) is recorded entirely at the bench scale and at the pore scale with a spatial resolution of 0.5 and 0.01 mm, respectively. The technique is applied to study channelized gas flow in saturated glass beads. We analyze the phase distribution at the pore scale and derive a pixel-based method for the measurement of saturation at the larger scale. This method assumes linearity between the mean reflected light intensity and the local gas saturation if averaging is performed over representative areas (REV). The REV depends on the irregularity of the local pore structure and has a lower limit at the correlation length of the porous medium (somewhat above the size of the glass beads) and an upper limit which correlates with the width of gas channels. These limits could be quantified through optical analysis. The optical approach to estimate phase saturations was validated by gravimetric analysis where a characteristic ratio between the optically observed flow cell wall and the saturation within the bulk material was identified, which corresponds to the expectation based on geometrical considerations of the glass bead packing. Considering a transient flow experiment the optical method is demonstrated to be able to quantify the temporal evolution of the residual and the convective gas phase. We conclude that the new technique provides a valuable tool to improve our quantitative understanding of multiphase phenomena across different scales.