Abstract
In this paper, the effect of increasing or decrea-sing energy transferred by ultrasound waves on the dy-namics of a cavitation vapor bubble in a confined space such as pores of a porous medium saturated liquid is in-vestigated. The main motivation of this investigation is identifying and understanding the mechanisms of the en-hanced oil recovery using ultrasound waves method in order to be able to recognize the limitations and important parameters in this method. Boundary element method for the numerical solution is used. The problem is solved for the cases with and without surface tension. Numerical re-sults show that by increasing the amount of energy trans-ferred to the liquid filled cavity, bubble growth and col-lapse rates shows a significant increase which results the acceleration of liquid particles around the vapor bubble at both ends of the cavity. As a result, the exerted force on the possible obstacles, like sand particles or trapped oil droplets, increases and moves them. Consequently the permeability of the porous medium increases. Increasing the permeability of oil well, leads to Enhanced Oil Recov-ery. The numerical results show that with increasing energy transferred to saturated liquid cavity, no significant changes occurs during the life time of the vapor bubble. The results also show that the effect of surface tension on the results, given the scale of the problem, is not signifi-cant.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.mech.22.6.17275
Highlights
Due to the applications and important roles of cavitation bubbles in various industries and medicine, many researches has been carried out on the bubble dynamics in the vicinity of various surfaces and in a confined spaces
The dynamics of cavitation bubbles with different energy transfer and in the presence and absence of surface tension, the pores of the porous medium saturated with a liquid such as oil wells was studied numerically
The force applied to the possible barriers at both ends of the cavity increases which increases the permeability of the porous medium
Summary
Due to the applications and important roles of cavitation bubbles in various industries and medicine, many researches has been carried out on the bubble dynamics in the vicinity of various surfaces and in a confined spaces These studies show that the bubble behavior is highly dependent on its neighbor boundary. Duhon [3] was one of the first researchers who tested ultrasound waves radiation on the oil-saturated sandstone and observed increasing oil recovery He has explained that the reason of the enhanced oil recovery is formation of the cavitation bubbles because of the transmitted energy of the ultrasound waves that causes a force on the trapped oil drops inside the pores and increases the permeability. Experimental observations of some researchers indicate increasing of the permeability of a porous medium and enhancing oil recovery by radiation of the ultrasound waves [6,7,8,9]. Boundary element method (BEM) is employed for Numerical simulation of the problem under investigation
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