Non-Monotonic Retention Profiles of Suspended Particles Under Water Injection

Abstract

Abstract Injection of water with particles distributed by various features (size, shape, density, surface charge, Z-potential) can highly affect the retention profile (RP) of suspended particles. The main objective of this study is to investigate non-monotonic retention profiles (NRPs) during the axi-symmetric flow of size-distributed colloids and accordingly, predict injectivity decline reliably. For this target to be achieved, coreflooding is performed by water with particles that are distributed by sizes. The results obtained by implementing derived exact upscaled equations of colloidal transport for multi-component particle population closely match by the experimental data monitored during the flood provided that the model coefficients are determined from the tuning. Altogether, four tests are conducted from which breakthrough curves (BTCs) and retention profiles in three moments can be observed. The observed close match proves the accurate representation of the mathematical model in all tests due to the higher number of degrees of freedom of the experimental data array compared to the number of tuned model parameters.