English

Local Wettability Reversal during Steady-State Two-Phase Flow in Porous Media

Fluid Dynamics 2012-02-07 v1 Computational Physics

Abstract

We study the effect of local wettability reversal on remobilizing immobile fluid clusters in steady-state two-phase flow in porous media. We consider a two dimensional network model for porous medium and introduce a wettability alteration mechanism. A qualitative change in the steady state flow patterns, destabilizing the percolating and trapped clusters, is observed as the system wettability is varied. When capillary forces are strong a finite wettability alteration is necessary to move the system from single-phase to two-phase flow regime. For the case of both phases being mobile we find a linear relationship between fractional flow and wettability alteration.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1202.0887,
  title  = {Local Wettability Reversal during Steady-State Two-Phase Flow in Porous Media},
  author = {Santanu Sinha and Morten Grøva and Torgeir Bryge Ødegården and Erik Skjetne and Alex Hansen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1202.0887},
  year   = {2012}
}