2025/01/08 by Alex Hansen, Hansen, Alex, Santanu Sinha +1
Engineering · #Enhanced Oil Recovery Techniques #FOS: Physical sciences #Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn) #Heat and Mass Transfer in Porous Media #Lattice Boltzmann Simulation Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2501.04468
openalex publication_date 2025/01/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
It is possible to formulate immiscible and incompressible two-phase flow in porous media in a mathematical framework resembling thermodynamics based on the Jaynes generalization of statistical mechanics. We review this approach and discuss the meaning of the emergent variables that appear, agiture, flow derivative and flow pressure, which are conjugate to the configurational entropy, the saturation and the porosity respectively. We conjecture that the agiture, the temperature-like variable, is directly related to the pressure gradient. This has as a consequence that the configurational entropy, a measure of how the fluids are distributed within the porous media and the accompanying velocity field, and the differential mobility of the fluids are related. We also develop elements of another version of the thermodynamics-like formalism where fractional flow rather than saturation is the control variable, since this is typically the natural control variable in experiments.