scholarly journals Multiphase electrokinetic coupling: Insights into the impact of fluid and charge distribution at the pore scale from a bundle of capillary tubes model

Author(s):  
Matthew D. Jackson
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanbang Zou ◽  
Pelle Ohlsson ◽  
Edith Hammer

<p>Carbon sequestration has been a popular research topic in recent years as the rapid elevation of carbon emission has significantly impacted our climate. Apart from carbon capture and storage in e.g. oil reservoirs, soil carbon sequestration offers a long term and safe solution for the environment and human beings. The net soil carbon budget is determined by the balance between terrestrial ecosystem sink and sources of respiration to atmospheric carbon dioxide. Carbon can be long term stored as organic matters in the soil whereas it can be released from the decomposition of organic matter. The complex pore networks in the soil are believed to be able to "protect" microbial-derived organic matter from decomposition. Therefore, it is important to understand how soil structure impacts organic matter cycling at the pore scale. However, there are limited experimental studies on understanding the mechanism of physical stabilization of organic matter. Hence, my project plan is to create a heterogeneous microfluidic porous microenvironment to mimic the complex soil pore network which allows us to investigate the ability of organisms to access spaces starting from an initial ecophysiological precondition to changes of spatial accessibility mediated by interactions with the microbial community.</p><p>Microfluidics is a powerful tool that enables studies of fundamental physics, rapid measurements and real-time visualisation in a complex spatial microstructure that can be designed and controlled. Many complex processes can now be visualized enabled by the development of microfluidics and photolithography, such as microbial dynamics in pore-scale soil systems and pore network modification mimicking different soil environments – earlier considered impossible to achieve experimentally. The microfluidic channel used in this project contains a random distribution of cylindrical pillars of different sizes so as to mimic the variations found in real soil. The randomness in the design creates various spatial availability for microbes (preferential flow paths with dead-end or continuous flow) as an invasion of liquids proceeds into the pore with the lowest capillary entry pressure. In order to study the impact of different porosity in isolation of varying heterogeneity of the porous medium, different pore size chips that use the same randomly generated pore network is created. Those chips have the same location of the pillars, but the relative size of each pillar is scaled. The experiments will be carried out using sterile cultures of fluorescent bacteria, fungi and protists, synthetic communities of combinations of these, or a whole soil community inoculum. We will quantify the consumption of organic matter from the different areas via fluorescent substrates, and the bio-/necromass produced. We hypothesise that lower porosity will reduce the net decomposition of organic matter as the narrower pore throat limits the access, and that net decomposition rate at the main preferential path will be higher than inside branches</p>


Geophysics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-69
Author(s):  
Artur Posenato Garcia ◽  
Zoya Heidari

The dielectric response of rocks results from electric double layer (EDL), Maxwell-Wagner (MW), and dipolar polarizations. The EDL polarization is a function of solid-fluid interfaces, pore water, and pore geometry. MW and dipolar polarizations are functions of charge accumulation at the interface between materials with contrasting impedances and the volumetric concentration of its constituents, respectively. However, conventional interpretation of dielectric measurements only accounts for volumetric concentrations of rock components and their permittivities, not interfacial properties such as wettability. Numerical simulations of dielectric response of rocks provides an ideal framework to quantify the impact of wettability and water saturation ( Sw) on electric polarization mechanisms. Therefore, in this paper we introduce a numerical simulation method to compute pore-scale dielectric dispersion effects in the interval from 100 Hz to 1 GHz including impacts of pore structure, Sw, and wettability on permittivity measurements. We solve the quasi-electrostatic Maxwell's equations in three-dimensional (3D) pore-scale rock images in the frequency domain using the finite volume method. Then, we verify simulation results for a spherical material by comparing with the corresponding analytical solution. Additionally, we introduce a technique to incorporate α-polarization to the simulation and we verify it by comparing pore-scale simulation results to experimental measurements on a Berea sandstone sample. Finally, we quantify the impact of Sw and wettability on broadband dielectric permittivity measurements through pore-scale numerical simulations. The numerical simulation results show that mixed-wet rocks are more sensitive than water-wet rocks to changes in Sw at sub-MHz frequencies. Furthermore, permittivity and conductivity of mixed-wet rocks have weaker and stronger dispersive behaviors, respectively, when compared to water-wet rocks. Finally, numerical simulations indicate that conductivity of mixed-wet rocks can vary by three orders of magnitude from 100 Hz to 1 GHz. Therefore, Archie’s equation calibrated at the wrong frequency could lead to water saturation errors of 73%.


2018 ◽  
Vol 127 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sultan Anbar ◽  
Karsten E. Thompson ◽  
Mayank Tyagi
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chance A. Norris ◽  
Mukul Parmananda ◽  
Scott Alan Roberts ◽  
Partha P. Mukherjee

Graphite electrodes in the lithium-ion battery exhibit various particle shapes, including spherical and platelet morphologies, which influence structural and electrochemical characteristics. It is well established that porous structures exhibit spatial heterogeneity, and particle morphology can influence transport properties. The impact of particle morphology on the heterogeneity and anisotropy of geometric and transport properties has not been previously studied. This study characterizes the spatial heterogeneities of eighteen graphite electrodes at multiple length scales by calculating and comparing structural anisotropy, geometric quantities, and transport properties (pore-scale tortuosity and electrical conductivity). We found that particle morphology and structural anisotropy play an integral role in determining the spatial heterogeneity of directional tortuosity and its dependency on pore-scale heterogeneity. Our analysis reveals that the magnitude of in-plane and through-plane tortuosity difference influences the multiscale heterogeneity in graphite electrodes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huhao Gao ◽  
Alexandru Tatomir ◽  
Nikolaos Karadimitriou ◽  
Holger Steeb ◽  
Martin Sauter

<p>Porous media surface roughness strongly influences the transport of solutes during drainage, due to the formation of thick water films (capillary condensation) on the porous media surface. In the case of interfacial-reacted, water-based solutes, these water films increase both the production of the solute, due to the increased number of fluid-fluid interfaces, and the loss of the solute by the retention in the stagnant water films. The retention of the solute in flowing water is described by a mobile mass retention term. This study applies the pore-scale direct simulation with the phase-field method based continuous solute transport (PFM-CST) model on the kinetic interfacial sensitive (KIS) tracer reactive transport during primary drainage in a 2D slit with a wall with variable fractal geometries. The capillary-associated moving interface is found to be larger for rough surfaces than smoother ones. The results confirm that the impact of roughness regarding the film-associated interfacial area can be partly, or totally masked, in a drained slit. It is found that the mobile mass retention term is increased with larger volumes of capillary condensed water films. To conclude, it is also found that the surface roughness factor has a non-monotonic relationship with the overall production rate of solute mass in moving water.</p>


2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (Special Issue No. 1) ◽  
pp. S52-S57 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Czachor ◽  
M. Flis-Bujak ◽  
M. Kafarski ◽  
A. Król

Two simple models of a non-cylindrical (wavy) capillary have been applied to show the impact of pore shape and of wetting angle on water sorptivity in soils. Wetting angle derived from the Washburn approach gives an overestimated value because of pores are modelled as round capillary tubes, whereas in reality they are tortuous, wavy and interconnected. In wavy capillaries, the impact of wetting angle on water sorptivity and capillarity driven water transport can be much more pronounced in relation to Washburn approach. An observed wetting front movement can be seen as a superposition of micro jumps and rests. Experiments carried out with glass powder and two soils confirm the above predictions.


SPE Journal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (03) ◽  
pp. 1234-1247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuangmei Zou ◽  
Ryan T. Armstrong

Summary Wettability is a major factor that influences multiphase flow in porous media. Numerous experimental studies have reported wettability effects on relative permeability. Laboratory determination for the impact of wettability on relative permeability continues to be a challenge because of difficulties with quantifying wettability alteration, correcting for capillary-end effect, and observing pore-scale flow regimes during core-scale experiments. Herein, we studied the impact of wettability alteration on relative permeability by integrating laboratory steady-state experiments with in-situ high-resolution imaging. We characterized wettability alteration at the core scale by conventional laboratory methods and used history matching for relative permeability determination to account for capillary-end effect. We found that because of wettability alteration from water-wet to mixed-wet conditions, oil relative permeability decreased while water relative permeability slightly increased. For the mixed-wet condition, the pore-scale data demonstrated that the interaction of viscous and capillary forces resulted in viscous-dominated flow, whereby nonwetting phase was able to flow through the smaller regions of the pore space. Overall, this study demonstrates how special-core-analysis (SCAL) techniques can be coupled with pore-scale imaging to provide further insights on pore-scale flow regimes during dynamic coreflooding experiments.


2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (37) ◽  
pp. 10251-10256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benzhong Zhao ◽  
Christopher W. MacMinn ◽  
Ruben Juanes

Multiphase flow in porous media is important in many natural and industrial processes, including geologic CO2 sequestration, enhanced oil recovery, and water infiltration into soil. Although it is well known that the wetting properties of porous media can vary drastically depending on the type of media and pore fluids, the effect of wettability on multiphase flow continues to challenge our microscopic and macroscopic descriptions. Here, we study the impact of wettability on viscously unfavorable fluid–fluid displacement in disordered media by means of high-resolution imaging in microfluidic flow cells patterned with vertical posts. By systematically varying the wettability of the flow cell over a wide range of contact angles, we find that increasing the substrate’s affinity to the invading fluid results in more efficient displacement of the defending fluid up to a critical wetting transition, beyond which the trend is reversed. We identify the pore-scale mechanisms—cooperative pore filling (increasing displacement efficiency) and corner flow (decreasing displacement efficiency)—responsible for this macroscale behavior, and show that they rely on the inherent 3D nature of interfacial flows, even in quasi-2D media. Our results demonstrate the powerful control of wettability on multiphase flow in porous media, and show that the markedly different invasion protocols that emerge—from pore filling to postbridging—are determined by physical mechanisms that are missing from current pore-scale and continuum-scale descriptions.


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