Abstract
Summary We studied immiscible two-phase flow instabilities in porous media under drainage conditions. The objective of our experiments was to improve our understanding of viscous fingering so that we could avoid it or at least account for it in flow simulations. This paper first presents the molding technique used to observe and measure viscous fingering in large, 3D, natural consolidated porous samples. Moldings of 16 flows showed instabilities that looked like fingers and stable displacements behind the unstable front. We correlated breakthrough recovery, mean local saturation, finger volume and width, pressure drop, and saturation profiles with dimensionless numbers. Three kinds of displacements occurred: stable displacements, with macroscopic viscous fingering, and displacements with both macroscopic and microscopic viscous fingering. Finally, we determined linear ID relative permeabilities.
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