Effect of Surface Wettability on Immiscible Displacement in a Microfluidic Porous Media

Jorge Avendaño, Nicolle Lima, Antonio Quevedo and Marcio Carvalho
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Jorge Avendaño: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22451-900, Brazil
Nicolle Lima: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22451-900, Brazil
Antonio Quevedo: Engineering Faculty, Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, Santiago de Querétaro, Querétaro 76010, Mexico
Marcio Carvalho: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22451-900, Brazil

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 4, 1-14

Abstract: Wettability has a dramatic impact on fluid displacement in porous media. The pore level physics of one liquid being displaced by another is a strong function of the wetting characteristics of the channel walls. However, the quantification of the effect is still not clear. Conflicting data have shown that in some oil displacement experiments in rocks, the volume of trapped oil falls as the porous media becomes less water-wet, while in some microfluidic experiments the volume of residual oil is higher in oil-wet media. The reasons for this discrepancy are not fully understood. In this study, we analyzed oil displacement by water injection in two microfluidic porous media with different wettability characteristics that had capillaries with constrictions. The resulting oil ganglia size distribution at the end of water injection was quantified by image processing. The results show that in the oil-wet porous media, the displacement front was more uniform and the final volume of remaining oil was smaller, with a much smaller number of large oil ganglia and a larger number of small oil ganglia, when compared to the water-wet media.

Keywords: wettability; porous media; displacement flow; capillarity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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