Related papers: Reducing the Leak Rate from a Damaged Oil Well by …
When highly viscous oil is produced at low temperatures, large pressure drops will significantly decrease production rate. One of possible solutions to this problem is heating of oil well by hot water recycling. We construct and analyze a…
Small fluid leaks are common and frequently troublesome. We often consider how to stop a leak, but here we ask a different question: how might a leak stop itself? We experimentally study leaking flow transitions from continuous drainage to…
Droplet formation in a system of two or more immiscible fluids is a celebrated topic of research in the fluid mechanics community. In this work, we propose an innovative phenomenon where oil when injected drop-wise into a pool of water…
Attempts to achieve "top kill" of actively flowing oil wells by insertion of dense drilling "muds", i.e., slurries of dense minerals, from above will fail if the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the gravity-driven counterflow produces…
Flows through porous media can carry suspended and dissolved materials. These sediments may deposit inside the pore-space and alter its geometry. In turn, the changing pore structure modifies the preferential flow paths, resulting in a…
Injections of large volumes of water into tight shale reservoirs allows the extraction of oil and gas not previously accessible. This large volume "super" fracking induces damage that allows the oil and/or gas to flow to an extraction well.…
The possibility of a significant slowdown of particles by removing them from a localized state in an electromagnetic potential well with a fixed spatial distribution is shown with a sufficiently slow decrease in the depth of this well with…
A concentration difference of particles across a membrane perforated by pores will induce a diffusive flux. If the diffusing objects are of the same length scale as the the pores, diffusion may not be simple, objects can move into the pore…
Erosion and deposition during flow through porous media can lead to large erosive bursts that manifest as jumps in permeability and pressure loss. Here we reveal that the cause of these bursts is the re-opening of clogged pores when the…
When an oil droplet is placed on a quiescent oil bath, it eventually collapses into the bath due to gravity. The resulting coalescence may be eliminated when the bath is vertically vibrated. The droplet bounces periodically on the bath, and…
Viscous dissipation causes significant energy losses in fluid flows; in ducts, laminar flows provide the minimum resistance to the motion, whereas turbulent currents substantially increase the friction at the wall and the energy requirement…
We show that when a non-wetting fluid drains a stratified porous medium at sufficiently small capillary numbers Ca, it flows only through the coarsest stratum of the medium; by contrast, above a threshold Ca, the non-wetting fluid is also…
Moving bottlenecks, such as slow-driving vehicles, are commonly thought of as impediments to efficient traffic flow. Here, we demonstrate that in certain situations, moving bottlenecks---properly controlled---can actually be beneficial for…
Nanofluids have the potential to enhance oil recovery through the structural disjoining pressure, a pressure developed when nanoparticles concentrate at the three-phase contact line. A model microfluidic porous network is used to measure…
Droplets can self-propel when immersed in another liquid in which a concentration gradient is present. Here we report the experimental and numerical study of a self-propelling oil droplet in a vertically stratified ethanol/water mixture: At…
There is a large debate on the destabilization mechanism of emulsions. We present a simple technique using mechanical compression to destabilize oil-in-water emulsions. Upon compression of the emulsion, the continuous aqueous phase is…
We describe a simple experiment involving spheres rolling down an inclined plane towards a bottleneck and through a gap. Results of the experiment indicate that flow rate can be increased by placing an obstruction at optimal positions near…
Active fluid droplets surrounded by oil can spontaneously develop circulatory flows. However, the dynamics of the surrounding oil and their influence on the active fluid remain poorly understood. To investigate interactions between the…
We consider a porous solid covered with a water film (or with a drop) in situations where the liquid is pumped in, either spontaneously (if the porous medium is hydrophilic) or mechanically (by an external pump). The dynamics of dewetting…
The contamination impact and the migration of the contaminant into the surrounding environment due to the presence of a spilled oil pipeline will cause significant damage to the natural ecosystem. For this reason, it is decisive to develop…