Beyond Darcy's law: The role of phase topology and ganglion dynamics for two-fluid flow

Armstrong, Ryan T.; McClure, James E.; Berrill, Mark A.; Rücker, Maja; Schlüter, Steffen; Berg, Steffen

doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.94.043113

Title: Beyond Darcy's law: The role of phase topology and ganglion dynamics for two-fluid flow

Journal Article · Thu Oct 27 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Physical Review E

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.94.043113· OSTI ID:1344249

Armstrong, Ryan T. ^[1]; McClure, James E. ^[2]; Berrill, Mark A. ^[3]; Rücker, Maja ^[4]; Schlüter, Steffen ^[5]; Berg, Steffen ^[6]

Univ. of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW (Australia). School of Petroleum Engineering
Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States). Advanced Research Computing
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Imperial College, London (United Kingdom)
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ, Halle (Germany)
Shell Global Solutions International B.V., Rijswijk (The Netherlands)

Relative permeability quantifies the ease at which immiscible phases flow through porous rock and is one of the most well known constitutive relationships for petroleum engineers. It however exhibits troubling dependencies on experimental conditions and is not a unique function of phase saturation as commonly accepted in industry practices. The problem lies in the multi-scale nature of the problem where underlying disequilibrium processes create anomalous macroscopic behavior. Here we show that relative permeability rate dependencies are explained by ganglion dynamic flow. We utilize fast X-ray micro-tomography and pore-scale simulations to identify unique flow regimes during the fractional flow of immiscible phases and quantify the contribution of ganglion flux to the overall flux of non-wetting phase. We anticipate our approach to be the starting point for the development of sophisticated multi-scale flow models that directly link pore-scale parameters to macro-scale behavior. Such models will have a major impact on how we recover hydrocarbons from the subsurface, store sequestered CO₂ in geological formations, and remove non-aqueous environmental hazards from the vadose zone.

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Research Organization:: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC05-00OR22725

OSTI ID:: 1344249

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1330291

Journal Information:: Physical Review E, Vol. 94, Issue 4; ISSN 2470-0045

Publisher:: American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 154 works

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