Pore Network Models (PNM) are an important approach to flow simulation in porous media, alongside direct numerical simulation and Lattice Boltzmann Models. Those methods are usually applied in the context of digital rocks, in which images of rock samples are used to extract the geometric information used in the simulation. When compared to the other approaches, PNM is considered to be a more...
We study experimentally and numerically the mechanisms of interfacial jumps, pinning and capillary hysteresis along an elementary pore. To this end, we analyze quasi-static fluid imbibition and drainage cycles in a capillary tube with conical constrictions (ink-bottle). Depending on the slope of the conical section, we observe a range of interfacial behaviors, including capillary jumps, and...
Viscous fingering instability occurs when a less viscous fluid displaces a more viscous fluid within porous media. It has been extensively studied with pore-scale simulations and bench-scale experiments over the past several decades. Yet the evolution of viscous fingers after the displacement front reaches the outer boundary of the domain is not fully understood (Mora et al., TIPM 2021, Salmo...
Particulate transport and retention in porous media are crucial processes influencing permeability reduction and clogging, particularly in natural and industrial systems. In this work, we present a novel hybrid Computational Fluid Dynamics-Discrete Element Method (CFD-DEM) approach that combines unresolved and resolved coupling strategies [1]. This innovative method allows the simulation of...
The geologic carbon sequestration and storage has been marked as one of
the solution to remediate Global Warming. Structural and capillary trapping, residual trapping, solubility trapping and mineral trapping have been selected as important trapping processes to secure storage over time.
The stability of trapped $CO_2$ in geological reservoir is then a key factor in feasibility assessments...
New uses of subsurface reservoirs such as temporary storage of natural gas and hydrogen, involve seasonal gas injection and production schedules accompanied by seasonal inclines and declines in reservoir pressure, respectively. In the gas withdrawal stage, rising water will trap gas in the gas/water transition zone below the producing gas cap. The injection and production of gas leads to...
Conventional measurements of two-phase flow in porous media often use completely immiscible fluids, or are performed over time-scales of days to weeks. If applied to the study of gas storage and recovery, these measurements do not properly account for Ostwald ripening, significantly over-estimating the amount of trapping and hysteresis. When there is transport of dissolved species in the...
Mineral dissolution processes are prevalent in nature, yet the effects of anisotropic reaction rates, stemming from factors such as mineralogy and thermal gradients, still remain poorly understood. In this work, we leverage a level-set immersed boundary method to study reactive transport for a grain with heterogeneous reaction rates. Specifically, we analyze the major axis orientation, mass...
Convection in porous media is ubiquitous in natural and industrial processes. For mass transport in geophysical systems, solute dispersion is an important effect to be understood, and this dispersion cannot be described by molecular diffusion alone. The presence of solid obstacles in the porous matrix induces an additional solute spreading, due to the convoluted fluid movements through the...
In certain regions of airless bodies, such as the Moon and cometary nuclei, volatile components like water, carbon dioxide, and methanol can persist and migrate within the regolith due to extremely low temperatures[1-5]. Studying the diffusion behavior of volatiles in porous media is crucial for the exploration and exploitation of these extraterrestrial resources.
Under such extremely high...
Porous media are characterized by their physical and mineralogical heterogeneity at spatial scales from nanometers to meters. Fluid flow and solute transport may have characteristic scales that span orders of magnitude in complex porous media. As a result, relatively large gradients in geochemical conditions may exist in regions in close proximity. Pore scale models have been successfully used...
A comprehensive understanding of crystallization mechanisms at the pore scale is necessary to accurately predict the kinetics of in-situ carbon mineralization in basalt formations. In this study, we use a finite-volume pore-scale Reactive Transport Model (RTM) augmented by CFD-based CO2/brine phase distribution and experimentally-informed geochemistry kinetics to understand the dynamic...
Ocean-ice interactions, particularly the dynamics of melting and refreezing at the ice-ocean interface, are critical in determining ice shelf stability and predicting large-scale ice sheet behavior. These processes exhibit significant spatial and temporal heterogeneity due to the complex couplings among the transport of salinity and temperature fields, and density-stratified fluid flow. In...
Pore-scale modeling and simulation are widely applied to investigate transport phenomena in porous media. Because the applicability of direct methods, like lattice Boltzmann and particle-based methods, remains restricted due to their high computational cost, pore network modeling (PNM) has emerged as one of the most efficient and effective approaches for practical applications. However, the...
The pore structure of carbonate rocks is intrinsically heterogeneous, with pore sizes ranging several length scales due to the depositional and diagenetic processes. It strongly influences the morphology and connectivity of the pore system and the petrophysical properties of these rocks. Because of this multiscale characteristic, the pore network characterization and the prediction of...
Understanding the directional properties of porous media is crucial for accurately predicting flow behavior, reactive transport, and fluid solid interactions in applications such as geothermal systems, energy storage devices, and biological systems. Directional permeability values, which reflect the medium's response to flow at various angles, are especially important for complex geometries...
Medical CT imaging is a key tool in porous rock characterization. Its
importance stems from its ability to provide large fields of view, enabling acquisitions of core samples of several centimeters in diameter and length. Consequently, analysis of more representative volumes of heterogeneous rocks becomes possible, since larger scale features and higher degrees of variability gets captured....
Transition from laminar to turbulent flow within the framework of conjugate heat transfer in porous media occurs in various applications across different scales, including geothermal energy extraction, thermal energy storage systems, high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, and microchip cooling. Understanding this transition is critical for optimizing systems designed to maximize surface area...
Granular media, exhibiting permeable packing structures, commonly exists in various fields of civil engineering, ranging from soil drainage, oil and gas extraction, to mining, and underground gas storage. The packing structure is dominated by grain features, such as size distributions, general shapes, and fine morphology features. Due to the opaque nature of overwhelming parts of natural...
Immiscible two-phase flows in geological fractures are relevant to various industrial contexts, including subsurface fluid storage and hydrocarbon recovery. Direct numerical simulations (DNS) of first-principle equations, which resolve three-dimensional (3-D) fluid-fluid interfaces, can address various flow regimes but are computationally intensive. To retain most of their advantages while...
Surface roughness plays a critical role in modelling fluid flow parameters through granular porous media, with applications in, for instance, hydrology, thermal storage and biofiltration. Accurate flow prediction models are necessary for optimizing production and reducing capital costs. Over the years, the inclusion of surface roughness, defined as the microscopic irregularities on the...
A computational-efficient method to calculate capillary pressure-saturation relations of immiscible, multiphase flow on two-dimensional pore morphologies is presented here. The method is an extension of the Pore Morphology Method that includes wetting angle and trapped mechanism of the displaced fluid. After validating the method with micro-chip fluid injection experiments, the method is used...
