Influence of wettability and saturation on liquid-liquid interfacial area in porous media.

نویسندگان

  • Vivek Jain
  • Steven Bryant
  • Mukul Sharma
چکیده

The knowledge of the area of interfaces between phases is important to understand and quantify many flow and transport processes in porous media. In this work, we apply the interfacial tracer technique to study the dependence of fluid-fluid interfacial area on saturation and wettability. The interfacial area between the wetting and the nonwetting phases (brine and decane) in unconsolidated porous media (glass beads) was measured using an anionic surfactant (3-phenyl decyl benzene sulfonate) as an interfacial tracer. The beads are water-wet; treating them with organosilane rendered them oil-wet. The measurements were done at a series of steady-state fractional flows, providing data at intermediate as well as residual saturations. Flow rates were kept low so that capillary forces controlled the fluid configurations. We observe significant differences in interfacial areas as a function of wetting-phase saturation as the wettability is changed from water-wet to oil-wet. During primary drainage, measured interfacial area increases monotonically with decreasing water saturation in a water-wet medium. In contrast, the interfacial area measured in the oil-wet porous medium increases with decreasing decane saturation, reaches a maximum, and decreases as the residual decane saturation is achieved. The oil-wet experiment is qualitatively consistent with theoretical results that predict the existence of a maximum in fluid-fluid interfacial area during drainage. The water-wet experiment is consistent with theoretical predictions that include the area of grains in pores that have been drained. We conclude that, in the water-wet experiments, the tracer adsorbs at the interface between the nonwetting phase and the wetting films on grains. In the oil-wet experiments, either the oil films are not sustained at high water saturation or the tracer does not adsorb at them, possibly prevented by steric hindrance. Interpretation of interfacial tracer experiments therefore requires care: for some mass transport processes, the thin films of wetting phase on grains will not behave the same as macroscopic volumes of wetting phase.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Gas-liquid Relative Permeability Estimation in 2D Porous Media by Lattice Boltzmann Method: Low Viscosity Ratio 2D LBM Relative Permeability

This work is a primary achievement in studying the CO2 and N2–oil systems. To predict gas-liquid relative permeability curves, a Shan-Chen type multicomponent multiphase lattice Boltzmann model for two-phase flow through 2D porous media is developed. Periodic and bounce back boundary conditions are applied to the model with the Guo scheme for the external body force (i.e.,...

متن کامل

Pore-scale analysis of trapped immiscible fluid structures and fluid interfacial areas in oil-wet and water-wet bead packs

The objective of this study is to obtain quantitative evidence of pore-scale immiscible fluid distribution in oil-wet and water-wet porous media using X-ray computed microtomography. Temporal and spatial saturation profiles, as well as surface and interfacial areas, are thoroughly analyzed through cycles of drainage and imbibition using samples with different wetting characteristics but similar...

متن کامل

Estimating interfacial areas systems for multi-fluid soil

Knowledge of the fluid-fluid and fluid-solid interfacial areas is important to better understand and quantify many flow and transport processes in porous media. This paper presents estimates for interfacial areas of porous media containing two or three fluids from measured capillary pressure (PC)-saturation (S) relations. The thermodynamic treatment of two-fluid PC-S relations presented by Morr...

متن کامل

Wettability of Liquid Mixtures on Porous Silica and Black Soot Layers

Sophisticated manipulation of surface roughness and solid surface energy are widely used to design super-hydrophobic layers. In this work, we designed highly porous silica layer with contact angle (CA) of 145°, and its robustness was promoted with thermal treatment. Wettability of coated layer is studied with CA measurement for different liquid surface tensions using diluted organi...

متن کامل

Estimation of Mass Transfer Coefficients Using Air-liquid Interfacial Area in Porous Media

Accidental spillages or leakages of organic compound within the environment, released as non-aqueous phase liquid (NAPL), result a widespread contamination of subsurface soils and groundwater. In such multi-phase flow system in porous media, interphase mass transfer mainly governs the overall transport processes that occur in the interface between the two fluid phases. Air-liquid interfacial ar...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:
  • Environmental science & technology

دوره 37 3  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2003