Accurate early‐time and late‐time modeling of countercurrent spontaneous imbibition

Interface pinning in spontaneous imbibition.

Evaporation and gravity induced pinning in spontaneous imbibition are examined within a phase field formalism. Evaporation is introduced via a nonconserving term and gravity through a convective term that constrains the influx of liquid. Their effects are described by dimensionless coupling constants epsilon and g, respectively. From liquid conservation, the early time behavior of the average i...

Nonlocal dynamics of spontaneous imbibition fronts.

We have studied spontaneous imbibition fronts generated by capillary rise between two roughened glass plates, the separation d of which varied between 10 and 50 microm. Perfect agreement with Washburn's law was obtained. We have determined the roughness exponent chi of the fronts, and found chi=0.81+/-0.01 for small length scales. Above a certain crossover length xi, it reached chi=0.58+/-0.04,...

Kinematical description of the spontaneous imbibition processes

A set of experiments of spontaneous imbibition for water displacing oil or a mixture of water and glycerine displacing oil, on flat and rectangular Hele-Shaw cells, is reported. Visualization of the imbibition process allowed the knowledge of the evolution of three basic kinematical variables: the active oil area, the interfacial length and the mean velocity of displacement. A derived kinematic...

Recovery of Oil in Limestone with Cationic Surfactant: Investigation of the Adsorption, Wettability, and Spontaneous Imbibition

The performance of petroleum recovery methods is dependent on the characteristics of the reservoir rock, oil quality, and formation water. One fundamental feature for considering petroleum recovery methods is the wettability of the rock reservoir. Also, this feature impacts the displacement of fluids in the rock reservior. In the case of the limestone, which normally features oil wettability, e...

Effects of Gravity and Inlet Location on a Two-Phase Countercurrent Imbibition in PorousMedia