Mechanisms of wettability control on two-phase immiscible displacement
in microfluidic porous media
Abstract
Wettability is one of the key controlling parameters for multiphase flow
in porous media and significant for various geoscience applications such
as geological storage of CO2, EOR, and energy storage. In this study, by
the means of high-resolution imaging, a series of displacement
experiments of brine invasion into oil-saturated microfluidic cells
under various wettability conditions were conducted to investigate the
wettability effects on displacement stability and fluid distributions.
Displacements were studied using two oil fluid systems with M (the ratio
of the viscosity of the defending fluid to that of the invading fluid)
to be 0.85 and 100 respectively under three different flow rates
(capillary number Ca ranging from 9.21 × 10−8 to 9.21
× 10−6). Then quantitative analysis of displacement
patterns based on fluid distributions images under different flow
conditions are performed. Remaining oil distributions are investigated
and correlated with capillary forces and wettability conditions. By
symmetrically varying the wettability of the flow cell to three
different wettability conditions (water-wet, intermediate-wet and
oil-wet), we found that as the viscous ratio (M)=0.85, at low capillary
number 9.21 × 10−8 when capillary force is dominated,
the displacement becomes more efficient as the flow cell becomes more
hydrophobic. At small capillary number, residual oil saturation is
decreased from 66.89% for water-wet to 59.22% for intermediate-wet and
50.45% for oil -wet. With the capillary number increased to 9.21 ×
10−6 , the displacement pattern becomes more compact
with 50.62% residual oil saturation. It is noted that with wettability
altered from water-wet to oil-wet under the capillary number of 9.21 ×
10−7, crossover occurs from stable flow into
capillary-dominated flow displacement, resulting in lower displacement
efficiency and lager residual oil saturation (Sor=59.77%). When the
viscous ratio was increased from 0.85 to 100, the viscous fingering is
found to be more obvious, resulting in lower the displacement efficiency
as the viscous force dominates the displacement for all the flow
conditions compared with fluid flows under M=0.85. Moreover, when the
viscous force is increased by increasing flow rates, wettability effect
on displacement efficiency and residual oil saturation is suppressed.