Percolation without trapping: how Ostwald ripening during two-phase displacement in porous media alters capillary pressure and relative permeability
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Adebimpe, Ademola Isaac
Foroughi, Sajjad
Bijeljic, Branko
Blunt, Martin J
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Conventional measurements of two-phase flow in porous media often use completely immiscible fluids, or are performed over time scales of days to weeks. If applied to the study of gas storage and recovery, these measurements do not properly account for Ostwald ripening, significantly overestimating the amount of trapping and hysteresis. When there is transport of dissolved species in the aqueous phase, local capillary equilibrium is achieved: this may take weeks to months on the centimeter-sized samples on which measurements are performed. However, in most subsurface applications where the two phases reside for many years, equilibrium can be achieved. We demonstrate that in this case, two-phase displacement in porous media needs to be modeled as percolation without trapping. A pore network model is used to quantify how to convert measurements of trapped saturation, capillary pressure and relative permeability made ignoring Ostwald ripening to account for this effect. We show that conventional measurements overestimate the amount of capillary trapping by 20–25%.
Date Issued
2024-09-01
Date Acceptance
2024-09-05
Citation
Physical Review E: Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, 2024, 110 (3)
ISSN
1539-3755
Publisher
American Physical Society
Journal / Book Title
Physical Review E: Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
Volume
110
Issue
3
Copyright Statement
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/39425334
Subjects
FLUID
NETWORK
Physical Sciences
Physics
Physics, Fluids & Plasmas
Physics, Mathematical
Science & Technology
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
United States
Article Number
035105
Date Publish Online
2024-09-26