Electrokinetic Control of Viscous Fingering
Name
PhysRevLett.119.174501.pdf
Size
915.59 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4bd32168688321afd891351663bec72f
Author(s)
Mirzadeh, Seyed Mohammad
Bazant, Martin Z
Date Issued
October 2017
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Mirzadeh, Mohammad and Bazant, Martin Z. "Electrokinetic Control of Viscous Fingering." Physical Review Letters 119, 17: 174501 © 2017 American Physical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We present a theory of the interfacial stability of two immiscible electrolytes under the coupled action of pressure gradients and electric fields in a Hele-Shaw cell or porous medium. Mathematically, our theory describes a phenomenon of “vector Laplacian growth,” in which the interface moves in response to the gradient of a vector-valued potential function through a generalized mobility tensor. Physically, we extend the classical Saffman-Taylor problem to electrolytes by incorporating electrokinetic (EK) phenomena. A surprising prediction is that viscous fingering can be controlled by varying the injection ratio of electric current to flow rate. Beyond a critical injection ratio, stability depends only upon the relative direction of flow and current, regardless of the viscosity ratio. Possible applications include porous materials processing, electrically enhanced oil recovery, and EK remediation of contaminated soils.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.174501
