scholarly journals Complex Electrical Resistivity and Dielectric Permittivity Responses to Dense Non-aqueous Phase Liquids' Imbibition and Drainage in Porous Media: A Laboratory Study

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 557-567
Author(s):  
Mohammad Ali Iravani ◽  
Jacques Deparis ◽  
Hossein Davarzani ◽  
Stéfan Colombano ◽  
Roger Guérin ◽  
...  

The effective techniques for remediation of sites polluted by dense non-aqueous phase liquids (DNAPLs) remains a challenge. Among the various technical monitoring methods, there is an increasing interest in studying the geophysical characteristics of contaminated soils, as indicators of the progress in clean-up programs. This work sought to investigate the variation of the electrical complex resistivity and the relative permittivity by analyzing the results obtained from spectral induced polarization (SIP) and time domain reflectometry (TDR). Different series of measurements during drainage and imbibition of DNAPLs in porous media were done to validate the clean-up process on sites polluted by DNAPLs. Therefore, a methodology based on laboratory work was designed and carried out to study the electrical complex resistivity (both in magnitude and phase) in the frequency range 0.183 Hz to 20 kHz, and the relative dielectric permittivity at 70 MHz. The experiments were done on small 1D cells. In these cells, glass beads were used as a porous medium. Two different fluid couples, i.e., coal tar (CT)/water and canola oil (CO)/salty ethanol (SE), were used to produce two-phase flow. Our findings highlight that due to the high resistivity of CO and CT, an increase in water saturation led to decrease in amplitude and phase. Saturation change of SE had the same effect on resistivity but no relationship was found for phase and saturation for the mixture CO and SE. It is also showed that the complex resistivity and relative permittivity measurements were compatible with generalized Archie's law and complete complex refractive index method (CRIM) model as two empirical models for defining the correlation between the electrical resistivity, relative permittivity, and saturation of each phase in the multiphase porous medium.

1967 ◽  
Vol 7 (01) ◽  
pp. 43-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max W. Legatski ◽  
Donald L. Katz

Abstract The best currently available description of the longitudinal mixing properties of a porous medium is an equation of the formEquation 1 which relates the effective longitudinal dispersion coefficient Dl to the molecular diffusion coefficient D0, the electrical resistivity factor F, the porosity f and a Peclet number. If the parameters dps and m are determined for a porous medium of known porosity and electrical resistivity factor, then a dispersion coefficient may be estimated for a given flow rate and a given gas pair. A new method, featuring on-line gas analysis by thermal conductivity and on-line data reduction by analog computation, was developed and used to determine these mixing parameters for eight naturally occurring sandstones and two dolomite samples. The exponent m of the above equation was found to vary between 1.0 and 1.5. The characteristic length dp s in the above equation was found to vary between 0.25 and 1.9 cm, with an average value of 0.4 cm for sandstones. Measurements were made on two cores in which paraffin wax had been deposited by evaporation from a pentane solution. They indicated that the presence of an immobile phase such as connate water could increase the dispersion coefficients significantly. INTRODUCTION While the petroleum and chemical industries have studied the mixing of miscible liquids flowing in consolidated porous media and of miscible gases flowing in unconsolidated porous media, relatively little data have been presented to describe the mixing of gases flowing through consolidated porous media. Such data are of particular interest to the gas storage industry. For instance, the U.S. Bureau of Mines is storing large quantities of a rich helium-nitrogen gas in contact with a natural gas in a dolomite reservoir. Since the rich gas occupies only 15 percent of the total reservoir volume, it is essential that the extent of rich gas-natural gas mixing be predicted and understood as a function of rock properties, pressure and rate of movement. This investigation was concerned only with the determination of longitudinal dispersion coefficients. It is understood that a transverse dispersion coefficient, which characterizes mixing perpendicular to the direction of flow, may be an order of magnitude less than the coefficient characterizing mixing in the direction of bulk flow.5,19 It should also be recognized that the use of any dispersion coefficient is in itself a simplification. It is necessary to assume that mixing in a porous medium may be characterized by the equationEquation 2 for flow in a single direction. A number of authors1 have pursued the mixing problem, not in terms of the so-called "dispersion model" described by Eq. 1, but in terms of a "mixing cell model". This model supposes that a porous medium is constructed of a large number of small mixing chambers and that the concentration of the diffusing component within each mixing chamber is uniform. Fick's law (Eq. 1) assumes that there is no gross by-passing of one fluid by another, and that there are not stagnant pockets of gas in the system under consideration as discussed by Coats and Smith.8 These assumptions are not always valid for flow through porous media and it is important to recognize the limitations upon Eq. 1.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (9) ◽  
pp. 3593-3602 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Comegna ◽  
Antonio Coppola ◽  
Giovanna Dragonetti ◽  
Angelo Sommella

Abstract. The term non-aqueous phase liquid (NAPL) refers to a group of organic compounds with scarce solubility in water. They are the products of various human activities and may be accidentally introduced into the soil system. Given their toxicity level and high mobility, NAPLs constitute a serious geo-environmental problem. Contaminant distribution in the soil and groundwater contains fundamental information for the remediation of polluted soil sites. The present research explored the possible employment of time domain reflectometry (TDR) to estimate pollutant removal in a silt-loam soil that was primarily contaminated with a corn oil as a light NAPL and then flushed with different washing solutions. Known mixtures of soil and NAPL were prepared in the laboratory to achieve soil specimens with varying pollution levels. The prepared soil samples were repacked into plastic cylinders and then placed in testing cells. Washing solutions were then injected upward into the contaminated sample, and both the quantity of remediated NAPL and the bulk dielectric permittivity of the soil sample were determined. The above data were also used to calibrate and validate a dielectric model (the α mixing model) which permits the volumetric NAPL content (θNAPL; m3 m−3) within the contaminated sample to be determined and quantified during the different decontamination stages. Our results demonstrate that during a decontamination process, the TDR device is NAPL-sensitive: the dielectric permittivity of the medium increases as the NAPL volume decreases. Moreover, decontamination progression can be monitored using a simple (one-parameter) mixing model.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Comegna ◽  
Antonio Coppola ◽  
Giovanna Dragonetti ◽  
Angelo Sommella

Abstract. The term non-aqueous phase liquid (NAPL) refers to a group of organic compounds with scarce solubility in water. They are the products of various human activities and may be accidentally introduced into the soil system. Given their toxicity level and high mobility, NAPLs constitute a serious geo-environmental problem. Contaminant distribution in the soil and groundwater entails fundamental information for the remediation of polluted soil sites. The present research explored the possible employment of time domain reflectometry (TDR) to estimate pollutant removal in a silt-loam soil that was primarily contaminated with a light hydrocarbon and then flushed with diverse washing solutions. Known mixtures of soil and NAPL were prepared in the laboratory to achieve soil specimens with diverse pollution levels. The prepared soil samples were repacked into plastic cylinders and then placed in testing cells. Washing solutions were then injected upward into the contaminated sample, and both the quantity of remediated oil and the bulk dielectric permittivity of the soil sample were determined. The above data was also used to develop a dielectric model (the α mixing model) which permits the volumetric NAPL content (θNAPL) within the contaminated sample to be determined and quantified during the different decontamination stages. Our results demonstrate that during a decontamination process, the TDR device is NAPL-sensitive: the dielectric permittivity of the medium increases as the NAPL volume decreases. Moreover, decontamination progression can be monitored using a simple (one-parameter) mixing model.


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1024-1031
Author(s):  
R R Yadav ◽  
Gulrana Gulrana ◽  
Dilip Kumar Jaiswal

The present paper has been focused mainly towards understanding of the various parameters affecting the transport of conservative solutes in horizontally semi-infinite porous media. A model is presented for simulating one-dimensional transport of solute considering the porous medium to be homogeneous, isotropic and adsorbing nature under the influence of periodic seepage velocity. Initially the porous domain is not solute free. The solute is initially introduced from a sinusoidal point source. The transport equation is solved analytically by using Laplace Transformation Technique. Alternate as an illustration; solutions for the present problem are illustrated by numerical examples and graphs.


Author(s):  
Swayamdipta Bhaduri ◽  
Pankaj Sahu ◽  
Siddhartha Das ◽  
Aloke Kumar ◽  
Sushanta K. Mitra

The phenomenon of capillary imbibition through porous media is important both due to its applications in several disciplines as well as the involved fundamental flow physics in micro-nanoscales. In the present study, where a simple paper strip plays the role of a porous medium, we observe an extremely interesting and non-intuitive wicking or imbibition dynamics, through which we can separate water and dye particles by allowing the paper strip to come in contact with a dye solution. This result is extremely significant in the context of understanding paper-based microfluidics, and the manner in which the fundamental understanding of the capillary imbibition phenomenon in a porous medium can be used to devise a paper-based microfluidic separator.


Author(s):  
Ishaan Markale ◽  
Gabriele M. Cimmarusti ◽  
Melanie M. Britton ◽  
Joaquín Jiménez-Martínez

Fluids ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (8) ◽  
pp. 266
Author(s):  
Péter German ◽  
Mauricio E. Tano ◽  
Carlo Fiorina ◽  
Jean C. Ragusa

This work presents a data-driven Reduced-Order Model (ROM) for parametric convective heat transfer problems in porous media. The intrusive Proper Orthogonal Decomposition aided Reduced-Basis (POD-RB) technique is employed to reduce the porous medium formulation of the incompressible Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations coupled with heat transfer. Instead of resolving the exact flow configuration with high fidelity, the porous medium formulation solves a homogenized flow in which the fluid-structure interactions are captured via volumetric flow resistances with nonlinear, semi-empirical friction correlations. A supremizer approach is implemented for the stabilization of the reduced fluid dynamics equations. The reduced nonlinear flow resistances are treated using the Discrete Empirical Interpolation Method (DEIM), while the turbulent eddy viscosity and diffusivity are approximated by adopting a Radial Basis Function (RBF) interpolation-based approach. The proposed method is tested using a 2D numerical model of the Molten Salt Fast Reactor (MSFR), which involves the simulation of both clean and porous medium regions in the same domain. For the steady-state example, five model parameters are considered to be uncertain: the magnitude of the pumping force, the external coolant temperature, the heat transfer coefficient, the thermal expansion coefficient, and the Prandtl number. For transient scenarios, on the other hand, the coastdown-time of the pump is the only uncertain parameter. The results indicate that the POD-RB-ROMs are suitable for the reduction of similar problems. The relative L2 errors are below 3.34% for every field of interest for all cases analyzed, while the speedup factors vary between 54 (transient) and 40,000 (steady-state).


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