Flow behavior of dilute polyacrylamide solutions through porous media. 1. Influence of chain length, concentration, and thermodynamic quality of the solvent

1984 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 308-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Werner Michael Kulicke ◽  
Raimund Haas
1970 ◽  
Vol 10 (04) ◽  
pp. 328-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. H. Raza

Abstract A laboratory study was made of the variables which affect the generation, propagation, quality und nature of foam produced inside a porous medium. It is shown that foam can be generated and propagated in porous media representative of reservoir rocks at pressure levels ranging from atmospheric to 1,000 psig, and under pressure differentials ranging from 1.0 to 50 psi/ft. The quality of foam depends on the type of foaming agent, the concentration of foaming solution, the physical properties of the porous medium, the pressure level, and the composition and saturation of fluids present. The nature of foam depends upon the type of foaming agent and its concentration in the foaming solution. The study shows that the flow behavior of foam in a porous medium is a complex one which cannot he correctly described in terms of the high apparent viscosity of foam. Also, the concept of relative permeability is not applicable to the flow of foam due to the associative nature of its components. On the basis of the discussed characteristics of foam, several applications of foam are suggested in oil recovery processes.


2011 ◽  
Vol 133 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Aloui ◽  
E. Berrich ◽  
D. Pierrat

In some industrial processes, and especially in agrofood industries, the cleaning in place mechanism used for hydraulic circuits plays an important role. This process needs a good knowledge of the hydrodynamic flows to determinate the appropriate parameters that assure a good cleaning of these circuits without disassembling them. Generally, different arrangements are present in these hydraulic circuits, such as expansions, diffusers, and elbows. The flow crossing these singularities strongly affects the process of cleaning in place. This work is then a contribution to complete recent studies of “aliments quality security” project to ameliorate the quality of the cleaning in place. It presents experimental and numerical investigations of a confined turbulent flow behavior across a conical diffuser (2α=16 deg). The role of a perturbation caused by the presence of an elbow in the test section, upstream of the progressive enlargement, was studied. The main measurements were the static pressure and the instantaneous velocity fields using the particle image velocimetry (PIV). Post-processing of these PIV measurements were adopted using the Γ2 criterion for the vortices detection and the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) technique to extract the most energetic modes contained in the turbulent flow and to the turbulent flow filtering. A database has been also constituted and was used to test the validity of the most models of turbulence, and in particular, a variant of the shear stress transport (SST) model.


2011 ◽  
Vol 115 (36) ◽  
pp. 17788-17798 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Alejandra Floridia Addato ◽  
Aldo A. Rubert ◽  
Guillermo A. Benítez ◽  
Mariano H. Fonticelli ◽  
Javier Carrasco ◽  
...  

2014 ◽  
Vol 136 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenglun Alan Wei ◽  
Zhongquan Charlie Zheng ◽  
Xiaofan Yang

A parallel implementation of an immersed-boundary (IB) method is presented for low Reynolds number flow simulations in a representative elementary volume (REV) of porous media that are composed of a periodic array of regularly arranged structures. The material of the structure in the REV can be solid (impermeable) or microporous (permeable). Flows both outside and inside the microporous media are computed simultaneously by using an IB method to solve a combination of the Navier–Stokes equation (outside the microporous medium) and the Zwikker–Kosten equation (inside the microporous medium). The numerical simulation is firstly validated using flow through the REVs of impermeable structures, including square rods, circular rods, cubes, and spheres. The resultant pressure gradient over the REVs is compared with analytical solutions of the Ergun equation or Darcy–Forchheimer law. The good agreements demonstrate the validity of the numerical method to simulate the macroscopic flow behavior in porous media. In addition, with the assistance of a scientific parallel computational library, PETSc, good parallel performances are achieved. Finally, the IB method is extended to simulate species transport by coupling with the REV flow simulation. The species sorption behaviors in an REV with impermeable/solid and permeable/microporous materials are then studied.


Polymers ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiankang Xin ◽  
Gaoming Yu ◽  
Zhangxin Chen ◽  
Keliu Wu ◽  
Xiaohu Dong ◽  
...  

The flow of polymer solution and heavy oil in porous media is critical for polymer flooding in heavy oil reservoirs because it significantly determines the polymer enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and polymer flooding efficiency in heavy oil reservoirs. In this paper, physical experiments and numerical simulations were both applied to investigate the flow of partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) solution and heavy oil, and their effects on polymer flooding in heavy oil reservoirs. First, physical experiments determined the rheology of the polymer solution and heavy oil and their flow in porous media. Then, a new mathematical model was proposed, and an in-house three-dimensional (3D) two-phase polymer flooding simulator was designed considering the non-Newtonian flow. The designed simulator was validated by comparing its results with those obtained from commercial software and typical polymer flooding experiments. The developed simulator was further applied to investigate the non-Newtonian flow in polymer flooding. The experimental results demonstrated that the flow behavior index of the polymer solution is 0.3655, showing a shear thinning; and heavy oil is a type of Bingham fluid that overcomes a threshold pressure gradient (TPG) to flow in porous media. Furthermore, the validation of the designed simulator was confirmed to possess high accuracy and reliability. According to its simulation results, the decreases of 1.66% and 2.49% in oil recovery are caused by the difference between 0.18 and 1 in the polymer solution flow behavior indexes of the pure polymer flooding (PPF) and typical polymer flooding (TPF), respectively. Moreover, for heavy oil, considering a TPG of 20 times greater than its original value, the oil recoveries of PPF and TPF are reduced by 0.01% and 5.77%, respectively. Furthermore, the combined effect of shear thinning and a threshold pressure gradient results in a greater decrease in oil recovery, with 1.74% and 8.35% for PPF and TPF, respectively. Thus, the non-Newtonian flow has a hugely adverse impact on the performance of polymer flooding in heavy oil reservoirs.


2014 ◽  
Vol 105 (3) ◽  
pp. 539-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Wang ◽  
Xiaodong Wang ◽  
Erhui Luo ◽  
Junlei Wang

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document