Speaker
Description
Fine particle migration and deposition (fines invasion) strongly modulate permeability, pressure drop, and clogging in porous materials, with major consequences for subsurface energy systems, drilling, filtration, and a wide range of engineered porous media. Yet fines transport remains difficult to predict because pore-scale mechanisms are rarely observed directly in 3D under dynamic flow, particularly in heterogeneous microstructures where preferential pathways and local constrictions compete. Here we use 3D time-lapse synchrotron X-ray imaging, performed at Diamond Light Source, UK, to track fines invasion in porous media at minute-scale temporal resolution, enabling direct quantification of how pore–throat size distributions and microstructural heterogeneity govern migration versus deposition.
We design controlled porous packings using glass beads to represent homogeneous and heterogeneous pore architectures, and resolve a consistent progression of deposition modes: surface attachment → throat bridging → blockage → pore filling → compaction, followed by intermittent remobilisation and downstream migration. Across experiments, we identify a critical throat-size to particle-size ratio (~1.7) that separates regimes: ratios >1.7 favour sustained migration and deeper penetration, whereas ratios <1.7 promote bridging and rapid deposition with pronounced permeability impairment. Importantly, heterogeneity introduces spatially localised deposition hotspots and channelised migration pathways, decoupling pore-scale trapping from bulk-scale flow behaviour and explaining why macroscale damage can be dominated by a small fraction of critical throats.
By linking time-resolved 3D observations to pore-network descriptors, we provide a mechanistic and quantitative framework to predict when and where pore-throat blockage will occur. The results support improved risk assessment and mitigation strategies for formation damage, filter-cake design, and injectivity management in drilling, subsurface storage, and other flow-through porous systems.
| Country | UK |
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