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One of the key stages in materials recycling is their crushing into finer elements, i.e., granular material or powder to be sorted and re-used. Those crushed granular materials can be mixed and reshaped using binders which will make it possible to reproduce solid objects with useful purposes. Mainly, the major practical difficulty in the implementation of these granular assemblies, whether...
Liquid particles within three-dimensional periodic scaffolds play a crucial role in various natural and engineering applications, for example, cellular arrays composing living tissue, 3-D materials that mimic tissue with an unprecedented level of control, and innovative liquid-infused materials designed for carbon capture. Although it has been known that fluid interfacial energy during...
Dispersed fluid systems (foam, emulsion, bubbly liquid, etc.) involves in many key geophysical/geochemical, environmental, and engineering processes[1-3]. However, regardless of many pore-scale and channel-scale approaches[4, 5], predicting dispersed fluid flow behavior in porous media is still a major challenge. Here we conduct experimental and theoretical investigation, trying to rationalize...
We investigate a sink-driven three-layer flow in a radial Hele-Shaw cell performing numerical simulations. The three fluids are of different viscosities with one fluid occupying an annulus-like domain, forming two interfaces with the other two fluids. Using a boundary integral method and a semi-implicit time stepping scheme, we alleviate the numerical stiffness in updating the interfaces and...
Two-phase flow in fractured media involving non-Newtonian fluids is of vital importance in many subsurface engineering applications. However, the impact of non-Newtonian rheology on the displacement dynamics remains unclear. In this work, we perform primary drainage experiments in which a Xanthan gum solution displaces a silicone oil in a transparent rough fracture for a wide range of...
Hydrogen ($\mathrm{H_2}$) energy is being developed as a promising alternative to fossil fuels in response to growing energy demand and the urgent need to mitigate climate change. However, the significant obstacle to its wide application is the storage problem. Underground hydrogen storage (UHS) in depleted hydrocarbon fields and aquifers underground holds great promise. UHS includes temporary...
The stability of two-phase flow in porous media is known to depend on the viscosity ratio and on the capillary number. The transition from a stable regime, to viscous or capillary fingering is not always clear. In this work, we investigate the role of wetting films on the stability of two-phase flow during a drainage. Such films are ubiquitous in porous media and appear when the solid is...
Capillary imbibition is a widespread phenomenon in both natural and industrial fields. While most studies focused on the imbibition between two Newtonian fluids or the fluid pair composed of a non-Newtonian liquid and air, the imbibition of a liquid-liquid system, where the wetting phase is a non-Newtonian fluid, remains relatively unexplored. Understanding the dynamics of flow for such fluid...
Abstract: Fracturing-Soaking-Producing (FSP) is considered one of the effective methods in the development of shale oil. Improving the imbibition efficiency during the FSP process cannot be achieved without accurate understanding of reservoir wettability. Here, we used contact angle wettability method, spontaneous imbibition wettability method with nuclear magnetic resonance, centrifugation...
With the ongoing transition towards net-zero, focus has been gradually shifting away from exploration and into the maximisation of production from already existing reservoirs. Here, traditional oil recovery methods typically extract around 30% of the oil in place – giving large opportunity for more efficient recovery techniques. Among which, surfactant/polymer methods have the capability of...
Pore scale fluctuations during multiphase flow in porous media have been observed over the past decade particularly at capillary dominated flow regimes. While multiphase flow in porous media is typically predicted using models that employ average properties, the current models do not incorporate these fluctuations at the pore scale. It therefore remains unclear how flow fluctuations can be...
Multiphase flow in porous media with moving particles is common in many natural and industrial processes, such as low-salinity water-flooding, sand production, and microbial enhanced oil recovery, etc. With complex interactions between fluids, particles and pore surfaces, the flow behaviors in such systems are often distinct. To understand the effects of particle migration on multiphase flow...
The imbibition in porous media plays a critical role in various natural and engineering processes, such as rainfall infiltration, hydrocarbon recovery, geological CO2 storage, and environmental remediation. Microfractures and discontinuities are naturally presented and purposely induced in natural rocks and soils. The interaction between these heterogeneities and the matrix increases the...
Spontaneous imbibition (SI) driven by the capillary force is pivotal to diverse earth science applications. To elucidate the interplay between capillary and viscous forces during spontaneous imbibition in porous media, the pore-network model proves to be an efficient tool. We initially verify our dynamic pore-network model against a series of water-air spontaneous imbibition experiments on...
Using porous materials for absorption of fluids has been practiced for thousands of years, for e.g. water storage and release and for filtration purposes. The chemical nature of the porous material and the flow dynamics determine how absorption takes place and which fluids are preferentially absorbed. In this way, materials can be designed for various fluid separation applications. In our...
The interfacial curvature of immiscible fluids within porous media is critical for the comprehensive understanding of multiphase fluid, impacting capillary pressure, relative permeability, saturation distribution, and the formation of preferential flow paths. Despite many studies that have been made demonstrating that interfacial curvature is strongly affected by wettability, there are still...
When previous researchers reconstructed three-dimensional rock models based on two-dimensional images (cast thin sections, electron microscopy, CT slices), they usually modeled based on particle size distribution, replacing particles in the model with spheres. This method is suitable for rocks with good particle size sorting. However, the sorting of conglomerates is poor, the particle size of...
Relative permeability is an essential parameter to describe flow and transport in porous media, which is a vital process throughout various underground engineering and environmental projects. Traditional laboratory measurements for two-phase flow in rock samples are rather time-consuming and financially expensive. Digital physical analysis, on the other hand, provides a convenient alternative...
Understanding preferential flow in porous media holds substantial theoretical significance on the design and optimization of hydrocarbon exploitation in shale reservoir. Previous researches discussed the competition of imbibition front in layered porous media while the underlining mechanism for interfacial dynamics and induced displacement efficiency of multiphase flow remains ambiguous. In...
Wettability is one of the critical parameters affecting multiphase flow in porous media. The wettability is determined by the affinity of fluids to the rock surface, which varies due to factors such as mineral heterogeneity, roughness, ageing, pore-space geometry, etc. It is well known that wettability varies spatially in natural rocks, it is still generally considered a constant parameter in...
Foam improves sweep efficiency in gas-injection processes to sequester CO2 in, and to produce hydrocarbons from, porous geological formations (Bellow, 2023, Rossen et al., 2022). Gas trapping plays a key role in foam’s ability to reduce gas mobility in porous media. We describe a study of gas trapping and diffusion in a sandstone core using nitrogen (N2) foam and krypton (Kr) as a gas-phase...
Understanding the mechanisms of CO2-water-oil three-phase low is crucial for enhancing oil recovery and improving CO2 storage efficiency. In the present study, with the help of high pressure high temperature microfluid experimental system, the pore-scale CO2-water-oil three-phase flow is directly visualized and the underlying mechanisms of triple-phase flow are revealed.
During the...
Leveraging various energy storage techniques spanning daily, weekly, and seasonal cycles offers a pathway to lower carbon dioxide emissions per energy unit. Employing renewable energy for hydrogen production, storage, and recycling emerges as a highly viable tactic to manage seasonal energy fluctuations. Deep saline aquifers provide a practical solution for extensive hydrogen storage,...
Fluid-rich chimney-like structures characterized by a high porosity and permeability are widely observed in sedimentary basins. Thus, understanding the mechanisms leading to focused fluid flow is crucial in predicting natural and human-induced fluid leakage, especially in geological sequestration scenarios. Mechanical and reactive porosity waves provide a mechanism predicting spontaneous...
The capillary state of water in porous media is of paramount importance at the caprock-aquifer interface to prevent any CO2 leakage. But it also significantly influences gas dissolution and solid mineralization reactions, crucial for CO2 trapping and earth science engineering. Capillarity-based geochemistry has been experimentally documented and quantified at the one-pore sale. Yet, capillary...
he geological features of fractured-vuggy carbonate reservoirs are complex, primarily manifested in the multiscale nature, diverse distribution, and complex connectivity and combination of fractures and vugs. The fluid flow behavior in such media is complex, involving both porous flow in the matrix and fractures and free flow in vugs. This results in the internal flow showing features of...
CO2 flooding is a strategic measure to enhance oil recovery (EOR) while mitigating CO2 emissions. In recent years, dimethyl ether (DME) has emerged as a promising solvent used in EOR practices. Its potential application in CO2 flooding attracts considerable interest. However, accurate modeling of the phase behavior of the DME-H2O-CO2-Hydrocarbon system remains a challenge, which leads to the...
Nowadays, due to the substantial oil consumption and a significant reduction in the natural oil reservoir production capacity, the demand for methods to enhance and optimize production life, especially in mature reservoirs, has grown. Enhancing oil recovery (EOR) from mature reservoirs is a well-known technique that can meet growing energy demands. Among various EOR methods, gas-based...
Effects of particle density and pore fluid on granular flow in a rotating drum
Yu Chen 1, Si Suo 2, Yixiang Gan 1,3
1 School of Civil Engineering, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
2 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom
3 Sydney Nano Institute, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, NSW
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