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We propose a simple microfluidic approach: Dissolution-After-Precipitation (DAP), to investigate regimes of carbonate rock dissolution and multiphase reactive transport. In this method, a carbonate porous medium is created in a glass microchannel via calcium carbonate precipitation, after which an acid is injected into the channel to dissolve the precipitated porous medium. Utilizing the DAP method, for the first time we realized all five classical single-phase carbonate rock dissolution regimes (uniform, compact, conical, wormhole, ramified wormholes) in a microfluidic chip. The results are validated against the established theoretical dissolution diagram, which shows good agreement. Detailed analysis of these single-phase dissolutions suggests that the heterogeneity of the porous medium may significantly impact how the dissolution patterns evolve over time. Furthermore, DAP is utilized to investigate multiphase dissolution. As examples we tested the cases of an oleic phase (tetradecane) and a gaseous phase (CO2). Results show that the presence of a nonaqueous phase in pore spaces induces the formation of wormholes despite weak advection, and these wormholes ultimately become pathways for nonaqueous phase transport. However, the transport of tetradecane in the wormhole is very slow, causing acid breakthrough into neighboring regions. This mechanism enhances lateral connectivity between wormholes and may lead to a wormhole network. In contrast, CO2 moves rapidly and continuously seeks to enter a widening wormhole from a narrower wormhole or the porous regions, generating phenomena such as ganglia redistribution and counterflow (flow of gas opposite to acid flow). Extensive independent experiments are conducted to verify the reproducibility of the observed phenomena/mechanisms and further analyze them. Real-time monitoring of fluid pressure drop during dissolution is implemented to complement microscopy image analysis. Our method can be implemented repeatedly on the same chip, which offers a convenient and inexpensive option to study pore-scale reactive transport mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents a workflow to optimize the location of CO2 injectors in order to maximize stored volume and prevent fault reactivation due to increases of pore pressure. We combine coupled reservoir flow and geomechanics simulations with neural network surrogate models and find the best injector location based on net present environmental value (NPEV). The surrogate models can complement the numerical reservoir simulations and efficiently optimize the well location and injection rate via the steepest ascent algorithm. We apply the workflow to the Brugge field, a closed synthetic reservoir that incorporates multiple faults, as an example. The surrogate model predicts a NPEV of approximately 0.19 billion carbon credits for the Brugge field, which is consistent with the corresponding reservoir simulation. NPEV will change under different safety factors that serve as an additional injection control to enhance the safety of injection. This proposed workflow could be readily applied to other similar reservoir models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preferential flow that leads to non-uniform displacement, especially in heterogeneous porous media, is usually unwelcome in most practical processes. We propose a self-adaptive preferential flow control mechanism by using dispersed polymers, which is supported strongly by experimental and numerical evidence. Our experiments are performed on a microchip with heterogeneous porous structures where oil is displaced by dispersed polymer microsphere particles. Even though the size of the particles is much smaller than the pore-throat size, the diversion effect by the dispersed microspheres is still proved. Therefore, the plugging effect is not the major mechanism for preferential flow control by dispersed polymers. The mechanisms are further investigated by pore-scale modelling, which indicates that the dispersed polymers exhibit an adaption ability to pressure and resistance in the porous flow field. In such an intelligent way, the displacing fluid with dispersed polymers smartly controls the preferential flow by inducing pressure fluctuations, and demonstrates better performance in both efficiency and economic aspects than the traditional method by simply increasing the viscosity. These insights can be applied to improve techniques in the field, such as enhanced oil recovery and soil wetting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Six coreflood experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of hydrolyzed-polyacrylamide (HPAM) polymer solutions on the residual oil saturation (ROS) in Bentheimer-sandstone cores. All six cores were first saturated with brine and then flooded in the following sequence: oil to zero water cut, brine to zero oil cut, glycerin solution to zero oil cut, polymer in low-salinity brine to zero oil cut, and finally polymer in high-salinity brine to zero oil cut. The first polymer solution had approximately the same viscosity as the glycerin solution. The first polymer flood was designed to maximize the effect of viscoelasticity on the ROS by flooding the cores at a high Deborah number (NDe), and, as expected, resulted in a lower ROS. The second polymer flood in high-salinity brine had approximately the same viscosity, but a much lower relaxation time, and the flood had a much lower NDe. Unexpectedly, there was a further substantial reduction in ROS during the second polymer flood. The lowest ROS after the second polymer flood was only 0.07. This is a truly remarkable result, considering that there was no reduction in interfacial tension (IFT), the capillary numbers were maintained below the critical capillary number for Bentheimer sandstone, and the viscosities of both polymer solutions were equal to or less than that of the glycerin solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spontaneous liquid imbibition is a dominant mechanism for moving fluids in confinements with extremely high hydrodynamic resistance; i.e. nanopores. We demonstrate the impact of hydrophilicity and liquid polarity on nanoscale imbibition with dynamic measurements of the uptake of water–isopropanol (polar) and heptane (nonpolar) within 2D glass–silica nanochannels exposed to varied drying conditions and rehydration (rehydroxylation) cycles. The Lucas–Washburn equation, which does not consider interfacial fluidity effects, predicts that water–IPA and heptane should imbibe at similar speeds. However, we observed stymied and hysteretic water–IPA imbibition trends explained by extremely large contact line friction and increased effective viscosity, both surface chemistry-dependent, whereupon the results match a modified version of the Lucas–Washburn equation that accounts for dynamic wetting. In contrast, heptane imbibition, though still slower than the Lucas–Washburn equation prediction, was fairly insensitive to drying history and an order of magnitude faster than the polar mixture. The imbibition of aqueous solutions in analogous siliceous nanoporous materials and structures, ubiquitous in earth science and nanotechnology, may also be subject to hysteretic and large energy dissipation at contact lines and interfaces on account of hydrophilicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transport and filtration of micron and submicron particles in porous media is important in applications such as water purification, contaminants dispersion, and drilling mud invasion. Existing macroscopic models often fail to be predictive without empirical adjustments and a more fundamental approach may be required. We develop a physically-representative, 3D pore network model based on a particle tracking method to simulate particle retention and permeability impairment in polydisperse particle systems. The model includes the effect of hydraulic drag, gravity, electrostatic and van der Waals forces, as well as Brownian motion. A converging-diverging pore throat geometry is used to capture the mechanism of interception. With the analytical solution of fluid velocity within a pore throat, the trajectory of each particle is calculated explicitly. We also incorporate surface roughness and particle-surface interaction to determine particle attachment and detachment. Pore throat structure and conductivity are updated dynamically to account for the effect of deposited particles. Predictions of effluent concentration and macroscopic filtration coefficient are in good agreement with published experimental data. We find that the filtration coefficient is dependent on the relative angle between fluid flow and gravity. Particle deposition by interception is significant for large particle/grain size ratios. Brownian diffusion is the primary cause of retention at low Peclet numbers, especially for small gravity numbers. Particle size distribution is found to be a cause of hyperexponential deposition often observed in experiments. Permeability reduction was small for strong repulsive forces because particles only deposited in paths of slow velocity. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 63: 3118-3131, 2017 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water-based polymers are often used to improve oil recovery by increasing sweep efficiency. However, recent laboratory and field work have suggested these polymers, which are often viscoelastic, may also reduce residual oil saturation (ROS). The objective of this work is to investigate the effect of viscoelastic polymers on ROS in Bentheimer sandstones and identify conditions and mechanisms for the improved recovery. Bentheimer sandstones were saturated with a heavy oil (120 cp) and then waterflooded to ROS with brine followed by an inelastic Newtonian fluid (diluted glycerin). These floods were followed by injection of a viscoelastic polymer, hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM). Significant reduction in residual oil was observed for all corefloods performed at constant pressure drop when the polymer had significant elasticity (determined by the dimensionless Deborah number, NDe). An average residual-oil reduction of 5% original oil in place (OOIP) was found during HPAM polymer floods for NDe of 0.6 to 25. HPAM floods with very-low elasticity (NDe<0.6) did not result in observable reduction in ROS; however, another 10% OOIP residual oil was reduced when the flow rate was increased (NDe>25). All experiments at constant pressure drop indicate that polymer viscoelasticity reduces the ROS. Results from computed-tomography (CT) scans further support these observations. A correlation between Deborah number and ROS is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report summarizes our recent experimental findings [Xie et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 2022] and pore-scale simulation results [Xie et al., Phys. Rev. Fluids., 2020] on viscoelastic oscillation, which is a new observation of viscoelastic instability in the multiphase flow state. The viscoelastic oscillation causes trapping of droplets in contraction-expansion micro-channels regardless of the injection rate. Based on the force balance analysis of the viscous, capillary and elastic forces, the oscillation amplitude is found to linearly increase with viscoelasticity, and the trapped droplet size is determined by the elasto-capillary number. The oscillation also helps to extract droplets from their originally trapped positions such as dead-ends once a critical Deborah number is reached. These results successfully explain the phenomenon that the alternative injection of viscoelastic and inelastic fluids continually produces additional oil, indicating that the viscoelastic oscillation is a new important mechanism of viscoelastic fluid for enhanced oil recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potential leakage of hydrocarbon fluids or carbon dioxide (CO2) out of subsurface formations through wells with fractured cement or debonded microannuli is a primary concern in oil-and gas production and CO2 storage. The presence of fractures in a cement annulus with apertures on the order of 10–300 µm can pose a significant leakage danger with effective permeability in the range of 0.1–1.0 md. Leakage pathways with small apertures are often difficult for conventional oilfield cement to repair; thus, a low-viscosity sealant that can be placed into these fractures easily while providing a long-term robust seal is desired. The development of a novel application with pH-triggered polymeric sealants could potentially be the solution to plugging these fractures. The application is based on the transport and reaction of a low-pH poly(acrylic acid) polymer through fractures in strongly alkaline cement. The pH-sensitive microgels viscosify after neutralization with cement to become highly swollen gels with substantial yield stress that can block fluid flow. Experiments in a cement fracture determined the effects of the viscosification and gel deposition with real-time visual observation and measurements of pressure gradient and effluent pH. Although the pH-triggered gelling mechanism and rheology measurements of the polymer gel show promising results, the polymer solution undergoes a reaction caused by the release of calcium cation from cement that collapses the polymer network (syneresis). It produces an undesirable calcium-precipitation byproduct that is detrimental to the strength and stability of the gel in place. As a result, gel-sealed leakage pathways that were subjected to various degrees of syneresis often failed to hold backpressures. Multiple chemicals were tested for pretreatment of cement cores to remove calcium from the cement surface zone to inhibit syneresis during polymer placement. A chelating agent, sodium triphosphate (Na5P3O10), was found to successfully eliminate syneresis without compromising the injectivity of polymer solution during placement. Polymer-gel strength is determined by recording the maximum-holdback pressure gradients during liquid breakthrough tests after various periods of pretreatment and polymer shut-in time. Cores pretreated with Na5P3O10 successfully held up to an average of 70 psi/ft, which is significantly greater than the range of pressure gradients expected in CO2-storage applications. The use of such inexpensive, pH-triggered polyacrylic acid polymer allows the sealing of leakage pathways effectively under high-pH conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Micro/nanofluidic experiments in synthetic representations of tight porous media, often referred to as “reservoir-on-a-chip” devices, are an emerging approach to researching anomalous fluid transport trends in energy-bearing and fluid-sequestering geologic porous media. We detail, for the first time, the construction of dual-scale micro/nanofluidic devices that are relatively large-scale, two-dimensional network representations of granular and fractured nanoporous media. The fabrication scheme used in the development of the networks on quartz substrates (master patterns) is facile and replicable: transmission electron microscopy (TEM) grids with lacey carbon support film were used as shadow masks in thermal evaporation/deposition and reactive ion etch (RIE) was used for hardmask pattern transfer. The reported nanoscale network geometries are heterogeneous and composed of hydraulically resistive paths (throats) meeting at junctures (pores) to mimic the low topological connectivity of nanoporous sedimentary rocks such as shale. The geometry also includes homogenous microscale grid patterns that border the nanoscale networks and represent microfracture pathways. Master patterns were successfully replicated with a sequence of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and Norland Optical Adhesive (NOA) 63 polymers. The functionality of the fabricated quartz and polymer nanofluidic devices was validated with aqueous imbibition experiments and differential interference contrast microscopy. These dual-scale fluidic devices are promising predictive tools for hypothesis testing and calibration against bulk fluid measurements in tight geologic, biologic, and synthetic porous material of similar dual-scale pore structure. Applications to shale/mudrock transport studies in particular are focused on herein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel Eulerian network model that incorporates "shear dispersion," the stretching of solute due to nonuniform velocity profiles within pore throats is developed. The superposing transport method (STM) is nonlocal in time (i.e., uses information from several previous time steps) and is equivalent to performing network-wide time convolutions of elementary throat response functions. Predicted macroscopic longitudinal dispersion coefficients for disordered sphere packs are in good agreement with published experimental data. We further investigate the impact of mixing assumptions within pores on macroscopic longitudinal dispersion and find the dependence to be weak for disordered sphere packs. Limitations of Eulerian network models as a whole are also discussed, and their inappropriateness for ordered porous media concluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flow and transport in the subsurface occurs over a wide range of spatial scales (nanometer to kilometer). Modeling at the pore scale becomes imperative where scales are not separable. Since pore-scale models are computationally limited to small domain sizes, accurate field-scale modeling requires simulating parts of the reservoir at the pore scale and other parts at the continuum. The need for modeling large pore-scale domains for ascertaining macroscopic parameters is prevalent in the literature. We develop a hybrid mortar domain decomposition framework for parallel modeling (linear and nonlinear) flow and transport across scales and in large pore-scale domains. Novel and efficient mortar methods for coupling flow and transport are adapted and developed and comparisons are presented. Mortars are developed for pore-to-pore and pore-to-continuum interfaces and shown to be more suitable than the commonly used Lagrangian mortars for these interfaces. The methods are shown to produce accurate results and demonstrated to be much more efficient than solving the problem as a single domain even in the absence of parallelism (especially for transport). The coupling algorithms are also extended to include diffusive transport. The methods are further applied and validated for coupling pore-scale to continuum-scale subdomains. Finally, the methods are shown to be computationally efficient for nonlinear flow problems. The results of this work provide a promising step forward in closing the spatial gap between the pore scale and the continuum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several approaches have been developed in the literature for solving flow and transport at the pore scale. Some authors use a direct modeling approach where the fundamental flow and transport equations are solved on the actual pore-space geometry. Such direct modeling, while very accurate, comes at a great computational cost. Network models are computationally more efficient because the pore-space morphology is approximated. Typically, a mixed cell method ( MCM) is employed for solving the flow and transport system which assumes pore-level perfect mixing. This assumption is invalid at moderate to high Peclet regimes. In this work, a novel Eulerian perspective on modeling flow and transport at the pore scale is developed. The new streamline splitting method ( SSM) allows for circumventing the pore-level perfect-mixing assumption, while maintaining the computational efficiency of pore-network models. SSM was verified with direct simulations and validated against micromodel experiments; excellent matches were obtained across a wide range of pore-structure and fluid-flow parameters. The increase in the computational cost from MCM to SSM is shown to be minimal, while the accuracy of SSM is much higher than that of MCM and comparable to direct modeling approaches. Therefore, SSM can be regarded as an appropriate balance between incorporating detailed physics and controlling computational cost. The truly predictive capability of the model allows for the study of pore-level interactions of fluid flow and transport in different porous materials. In this paper, we apply SSM and MCM to study the effects of pore-level mixing on transverse dispersion in 3-D disordered granular media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the discovery of novel regimes of calcium carbonate dissolution in micron-scale confined spaces through microfluidic experiments. In the experiments, hydrochloric acid is injected into a microfluidic chamber with pre-deposited calcium carbonate solids. As the acid flow rate is decreased, the dissolution of calcium carbonate transits from a liquid/solid single-phase reactive transport regime to a gas/liquid/solid two-phase one. The two-phase regime further splits into two different regimes, one with fluctuating and the other with nonfluctuating gaseous CO 2 phase. We name the three regimes as "Nongaseous", "Gaseous Breathing", and "Gaseous Nonbreathing". The experimental observations are reproduced and interpreted by mathematical modeling. Results show that the regimes are controlled by the ratio of H+ concentration and saturated CO 2 concentration, the Peclet number and the second Damkohler number. Dimensionless diagrams distinguishing different regimes are presented and an empirical relationship is proposed. Our results offer insights into various engineering and natural processes, e.g., geological carbon storage, petroleum reservoir acidizing, Karst dissolution, and others that are governed by small scale multiphase reactive flow physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the use of physically representative pore-scale network model for non-Darcy flow in porous media is presented. It notes that the quantitative and predictive results of the study are gathered using computer-generated porous media and real sandstones digitized through x-ray computed microtomography (XMT). It relates that the validity of Forchheimer's equation, which includes a quadratic correction to Darcy's Law, is determined using network simulations.

Describes an analytical model for cleanup of yield-stress fluids in hydraulic fractures. Features of the model; Effect of the retention of fracturing fluid in a proppant pack on dimensionless fracture conductivity; Use of the derived analytical models to calculate the extent of fracture cleanup under a set of production conditions.

Network modeling has been performed to obtain quantitative and predictive results of the flow of yield-stress fluids in packed beds. Physically representative networks were used as the basis for the modeling, which have a one-to-one correspondence to computer-generated packed beds of spheres. The networks are able to account for the interconnectivity, heterogeneity, and converging/diverging geometry that are inherent in porous media. The approach can be used to model a wide range of non-Newtonian fluids, but the emphasis is for yield-stress .fluids that can be represented using a Bingham model. For these fluids, a threshold pressure gradient is required to initiate flow, and flow at low pressure gradients is characterized by critical percolation behavior. Quantitative results of superficial velocity vs. pressure gradient are presented, and are compared to traditional bundle-of-tubes models, as well as limited experimental data available in the literature. Important differences are observed between the network model and the constitutive models. These are attributed mainly to heterogeneity and converging/diverging geometry, which are not accounted for in the semiempirical models. Comparison to experimental data is good for certain fluids. In other cases, the modeling suggests that effects other than fluid rheology may also have affected fluid flow, such as adsorption or filtration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]