Simultaneous pressure and electro-osmosis driven flow in charged porous media: Pore-scale effects on mixing and dispersion

Abstract

Electrokinetic effects in porous media play a key role in a number of natural and industrial processes. Applications such as enhanced oil recovery, soil remediation and even drug delivery are affected by the Coulombic forces created by the solid-fluid interfacial interactions. These electrokinetic effects promote the development of non-homogenous slipping flow over charged surfaces at the pore scale, which can have a significant impact in the hydrodynamics of tight porous materials. For transport of ionic solutions in such systems (e.g. transport of low salinity water in tight oil reservoirs), combined effect of hydrodynamic transport and electrokinetic transport would be expected. While transport in pressure-driven transport will be pronounced in high permeability flow pathways, transport due to electric fields (e.g. electro-osmosis) will be more pronounced in tight pores were electrical diffuse layer is not negligible. In this work, we explored the pore-scale hydrodynamic characteristics of charged porous media using computational fluid dynamics. Different flow driving mechanisms were studied, e.g. conventional pressure driven flow, pure electro-osmosis as well as their superposition under different amounts of charged material. We then analyzed the effect of these distinct flow regimes on the transport of a passive tracer, finding how different driving mechanism result in distinct dispersion and mixing characteristics.