Pore geometry control of apparent wetting in porous media
Name
s41598-018-34146-8.pdf
Size
2.83 MB
Format
Unknown
Checksum (MD5)
455340e546b359cf6d3276e2163e5cf0
Author(s)
Rabbani, Harris Sajjad
Zhao, Benzhong
Juanes, Ruben
Shokri, Nima
Date Issued
October 2018
Journal
Scientific Reports
Citation
Rabbani, Harris Sajjad, Benzhong Zhao, Ruben Juanes, and Nima Shokri. “Pore Geometry Control of Apparent Wetting in Porous Media.” Scientific Reports 8, no. 1 (October 24, 2018). doi:10.1038/s41598-018-34146-8.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2018, The Author(s). Wettability, or preferential affinity of a fluid to a solid substrate in the presence of another fluid, plays a critical role in the statics and dynamics of fluid-fluid displacement in porous media. The complex confined geometry of porous media, however, makes upscaling of microscopic wettability to the macroscale a nontrivial task. Here, we elucidate the contribution of pore geometry in controlling the apparent wettability characteristics of a porous medium. Using direct numerical simulations of fluid-fluid displacement, we study the reversal of interface curvature in a single converging-diverging capillary, and demonstrate the co-existence of concave and convex interfaces in a porous medium—a phenomenon that we also observe in laboratory micromodel experiments. We show that under intermediate contact angles the sign of interface curvature is strongly influenced by the pore geometry. We capture the interplay between surface chemical properties and pore geometry in the form of a dimensionless quantity, the apparent wettability number, which predicts the conditions under which concave and convex interfaces co-exist. Our findings advance the fundamental understanding of wettability in confined geometries, with implications to macroscopic multiphase-flow processes in porous media, from fuel cells to enhanced oil recovery.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-34146-8
