Speaker
Description
Wetting film can develop in the corners of pore structures during imbibition in a strongly wetting porous material, which may significantly influence the two-phase flow dynamics. Due to the large scale difference between main meniscus and corner film, accurate and efficient modeling of the dynamics of corner film remains elusive. In this presentation, we develop a novel two-pressure dynamic pore network model incorporating the interacting capillary bundle model to analyze the competition between main meniscus and corner film flow in real porous media. A pore network with star-shaped pores and throats is extracted from the real porous material based on the shape factor and cross-sectional area, which is then decomposed into several layers of sub-pore-networks, where the first layer of sub-pore-network simulates the main meniscus flow while the higher layers characterize the corner film flow. The flow conductance of throats in different layers of sub-pore-networks are determined by high-resolution two-phase lattice Boltzmann modeling, thus inherently consider the viscous coupling effect. In addition, the snap off mechanism is incorporated which may play an important role under low flow rate condition. The accuracy of the developed dynamic pore network model is validated with both lattice Boltzmann simulation of imbibition in a strongly wetting square tube and microfluidic experiments of imbibition in a strongly wetting real porous chip. Then the model is used to simulate imbibition in a strongly wetting sandstone porous medium and the competition between main meniscus and corner film flow is analyzed. With the increase of capillary number (flow rate) and viscosity ratio between wetting and non-wetting fluids, the development of wetting corner film becomes less significant. Based on these two parameters, a phase diagram characterizing the competition between main meniscus and corner film flow is proposed, which may shed light to the design of some porous media related engineering processes, such as geological CO2 storage.
| Participation | In-Person |
|---|---|
| Country | China |
| MDPI Energies Student Poster Award | No, do not submit my presenation for the student posters award. |
| Acceptance of the Terms & Conditions | Click here to agree |
