Hysteresis of wettability in porous media: a review

Stabilizing fluid–fluid displacements in porous media through wettability alteration

We study experimentally how wettability impacts fluid–fluid displacement patterns in granular media. We inject a low-viscosity fluid (air) into a thin bed of glass beads initially saturated with a more-viscous fluid (a water/glycerol mixture). Chemical treatment of glass surfaces allows us to control the wetting properties of the medium and modify the contact angle θ from 5 deg (drainage) to 12...

Wettability Alteration Study for Two Phase Flow in Porous Media

Wettability of pores plays an important role in two-phase flow in porous media. In the case of oil recovery, it has been found from both laboratory experiments and field tests that deviation of reservoir wettability from strongly water-wet conditions either can increase or decrease in oil recovery efficiency which indicates a possible range of wettability change [1]. In this present work, the e...

Modeling Hysteresis in Porous Media Flow via Relaxation

Hysteresis models and gravity fingering in porous media

We study flow problems in unsaturated porous media. Our main interest is the gravity driven penetration of a dry material, a situation in which fingering effects can be observed experimentally and numerically. The flow is described by either a Richards or a two-phase model. The important modelling aspect regards the capillary pressure relation which can include static hysteresis and dynamic cor...

Macroscopic capillarity and hysteresis for flow in porous media.

A macroscopic theory for capillarity in porous media is presented, challenging the established view that capillary pressure and relative permeability are constitutive parameter functions. The capillary pressure function in the present theory is not an input parameter but an outcome. The theoretical approach is based on introducing the residual saturations explicitly as state variables [as in Ph...