Lattice Boltzmann simulation of immiscible fluid displacement in porous media: Homogeneous versus heterogeneous pore network
- School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, 28 West Xianning Road, Xi’an 710049 (China)
- James Weir Fluids Laboratory, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G1 1XJ (United Kingdom)
- Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801 (United States)
Injection of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}) into geological formations is a promising approach to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Predicting the amount of CO{sub 2} that can be captured and its long-term storage stability in subsurface requires a fundamental understanding of multiphase displacement phenomena at the pore scale. In this paper, the lattice Boltzmann method is employed to simulate the immiscible displacement of a wetting fluid by a non-wetting one in two microfluidic flow cells, one with a homogeneous pore network and the other with a randomly heterogeneous pore network. We have identified three different displacement patterns, namely, stable displacement, capillary fingering, and viscous fingering, all of which are strongly dependent upon the capillary number (Ca), viscosity ratio (M), and the media heterogeneity. The non-wetting fluid saturation (S{sub nw}) is found to increase nearly linearly with logCa for each constant M. Increasing M (viscosity ratio of non-wetting fluid to wetting fluid) or decreasing the media heterogeneity can enhance the stability of the displacement process, resulting in an increase in S{sub nw}. In either pore networks, the specific interfacial length is linearly proportional to S{sub nw} during drainage with equal proportionality constant for all cases excluding those revealing considerable viscous fingering. Our numerical results confirm the previous experimental finding that the steady state specific interfacial length exhibits a linear dependence on S{sub nw} for either favorable (M ≥ 1) or unfavorable (M < 1) displacement, and the slope is slightly higher for the unfavorable displacement.
- OSTI ID:
- 22403230
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Fluids (1994), Vol. 27, Issue 5; Other Information: (c) 2015 Author(s); Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-6631
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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