Imperial College London
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ProfessorMartinBlunt

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Earth Science & Engineering

Chair in Flow in Porous Media
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 6500m.blunt Website

 
 
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Location

 

2.38ARoyal School of MinesSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Singh:2017:10.1038/s41598-017-05204-4,
author = {Singh, K and Menke, H and Andrew, M and Lin, Q and Rau, C and Blunt, MJ and Bijeljic, B},
doi = {10.1038/s41598-017-05204-4},
journal = {SCIENTIFIC REPORTS},
title = {Dynamics of snap-off and pore-filling events during two-phase fluid flow in permeable media},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-05204-4},
volume = {7},
year = {2017}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Understanding the pore-scale dynamics of two-phase fluid flow in permeable media is important in many processes such as water infiltration in soils, oil recovery, and geo-sequestration of CO2. The two most important processes that compete during the displacement of a non-wetting fluid by a wetting fluid are pore-filling or piston-like displacement and snap-off; this latter process can lead to trapping of the non-wetting phase. We present a three-dimensional dynamic visualization study using fast synchrotron X-ray micro-tomography to provide new insights into these processes by conducting a time-resolved pore-by-pore analysis of the local curvature and capillary pressure. We show that the time-scales of interface movement and brine layer swelling leading to snap-off are several minutes, orders of magnitude slower than observed for Haines jumps in drainage. The local capillary pressure increases rapidly after snap-off as the trapped phase finds a position that is a new local energy minimum. However, the pressure change is less dramatic than that observed during drainage. We also show that the brine-oil interface jumps from pore-to-pore during imbibition at an approximately constant local capillary pressure, with an event size of the order of an average pore size, again much smaller than the large bursts seen during drainage.
AU  - Singh,K
AU  - Menke,H
AU  - Andrew,M
AU  - Lin,Q
AU  - Rau,C
AU  - Blunt,MJ
AU  - Bijeljic,B
DO  - 10.1038/s41598-017-05204-4
PY  - 2017///
SN  - 2045-2322
TI  - Dynamics of snap-off and pore-filling events during two-phase fluid flow in permeable media
T2  - SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-05204-4
UR  - http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000405423000010&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/51597
VL  - 7
ER  -
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