Experimental and Simulation Study on Viscous Fingering Flow through Heterogeneous Porous Media

Fluid displacement plays an important role in many industrial applications. The examples includeenhanced oil recovery (EOR), carbon capture and storage (CCS), biological filtration and the gas diffusionlayers of fuel cells. When a less viscous fluid (air) displaces a more viscous fluid (water), the interfacebetween the two fluids evolves into ramified patterns called fingering. Because the interface fingeringsignificantly decreases the displacement efficiency, understanding the fingering mechanism and developingmethods to control/suppress the interface instability cannot be overemphasized. Recent literature showsheterogeneous porosity may have potential to suppress viscus fingering in the porous Hele-Shaw cells. Inpractical applications of porous media, the wettability and the microscopic characteristics such as the poresize and shape will profoundly affect the evolution of the ramified patterns. A careful study on the viscousfingering in the heterogeneous porous media becomes a must. This project will conduct careful experimentsand computation to study the viscous finger propagation through heterogeneous porous media. The projectcontains two main parts. The first part is to study the effects of heterogeneous porosities on the developmentof viscous fingers, including the analysis of the influence of (1) pore scales on controlling viscous fingeringwith heterogeneous porosity; (2) wettability on suppressing viscous fingering in conjunction withheterogeneous porosity. The second part is to design a heterogeneous porosity medium that can reduceviscus fingering growth. All the work will be done in 2 years. The results will improve the fingering controland benefit the technology of fluid displacements.