Geometric criteria for the snap-off of a nonwetting droplet in
pore-throat channels with rectangular cross-sections
Abstract
Snap-off is a phenomenon that occurs when a non-wetting fluid displaces
a wetting fluid in pore-throat channels, leading to the breakup of
droplets at the throat. Snap-off plays a key role in many industrial
processes involving immiscible multiphase flows, such as droplet/bubble
manipulation, emulsion formation, and oil recovery. Here we derive
geometric criteria for the capillary snap-off at the pore-throat
junctions in 2D microchannels with rectangular cross-sections. The
criteria are theoretically presented in three categories according to
the range of the throat depth, h. We find that if h is
smaller than the throat width, snap-off will never occur, if h is
larger than the pore width, snap-off may occur but it is independent of
h, and if h is in between the throat width and the pore
width, a critical depth exists for the occurrence of snap-off. These
criteria are verified using numerical CFD simulations and validated
using microfluidic experiments. These results indicate the conditions
for snap-off in the pore-throat channel with rectangular cross-sections,
which clarify previous debates in the literature. One application of
this work is for micromodels, which are porous microfluidic chips used
as tools to observe multiphase flow in porous media at the pore scale.
Most micromodels are two-dimensional (2D), which have rectangular
cross-sections with uniform depth. The geometric criteria derived here
provide guidelines for the design of micromodels used in the study of
multiphase flow processes in porous media.