Effect of critical thickness on nanoconfined water fluidity: review, communication, and inspiration

Abstract It is crucial to precisely estimate the water transport behaviors in shale formation. However, the present study on this subject is quite limited. A comprehensive literature review is conducted and some improvements are proposed. In this paper, an improved model is proposed to investigate the flow of water in nanopores of shale formation. First, a quadratic equation is proposed to build the relationship between water viscosity and contact angle. Then, the effect of critical thickness on water transport behaviors is discussed. Results show that: (a) the flow enhancement is smaller than 1 when the contact angle is smaller than 100° due to energy barrier induced by strong hydrophilicity of the nanopore wall; (b) the flow enhancement becomes infinite when the contact angle is approaching 180°; and (c) the flow enhancement increases with decreasing of critical thickness, especially for hydrophilic nanopores (the contact angle is smaller than 120°) and nanopores with a relatively small diameter (smaller than 50 nm).