Abstract
We visualize the dynamics of immiscible displacement of a high viscosity wetting phase by a low viscosity non-wetting phase in a three-dimensional (3D) glass bead packing using confocal microscopy. Both phases were doped with two different fluorescent dyes, which enabled visualization of both phases simultaneously and quantification of the phase volumes without the need of image subtraction operations. The transient results show details of the displacement process and how pores are invaded by the non-wetting displacing phase. The static images at the end of the displacement process reveal how the trapped ganglia volume and morphology change with capillary number. The wetting phase is trapped as pendular rings spanning one to multiple pore necks. Details of the pore scale flow of oil wet media revealed with the experimental methods presented here can lead to better fundamental understanding of the physical processes and optimized enhanced oil recovery methods, CO2 sequestration and aquifer remediation.
Highlights
The displacement of one fluid by another immiscible fluid in a porous media is crucial in many applications, including oil recovery[1,2,3], CO2 sequestration[4,5], ground water remediation[6], impregnation of catalyst support[7], chormatography[8], transport through tissues[9,10,11,12], drying and impregnation of porous membranes[13,14]
The fluid displacement dynamics in drainage is remarkably different from imbibition
Avendaño et al.[30] compared the sequence of events that occur in oil displacement processes in water-wet and oil-wet 2D porous media micromodel to show that, at low capillary number, the remaining oil volume was larger in water wet media
Summary
Both the wetting (yellow) and non-wetting (blue) phases are shown. The remaining saturation of the displaced fluid is still relatively high at the largest capillary number explored This observation agrees with data from porous media formed with smooth spherical beads, which reveals that the residual wetting phase saturation could not be reduced below Swr ≈ 0.0939. Fundamental understanding of the dynamics of the pore scale drainage flow brings new insights on how to reduce the residual oil saturation on oil wet reservoirs and improve oil recovery
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