2015/07/22 by Vegard Flovik, Flovik, Vegard, Santanu Sinha +3
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph) #Enhanced Oil Recovery Techniques #FOS: Physical sciences #Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn) #Material Dynamics and Properties #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Theoretical and Computational Physics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1507.06198
openalex publication_date 2015/07/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The change in contact angles due to the injection of low salinity water or\nany other wettability altering agent in an oil-rich porous medium is modeled by\na network model of disordered pores transporting two immiscible fluids. We\nintroduce a dynamic wettability altering mechanism, where the time dependent\nwetting property of each pore is determined by the cumulative flow of water\nthrough it. Simulations are performed to reach steady-state for different\npossible alterations in the wetting angle (\θ). We find that deviation\nfrom oil-wet conditions re-mobilizes the stuck clusters and increases the oil\nfractional flow. However, the rate of increase in the fractional flow depends\nstrongly on \θ and as \θ\→ 90^\∘, a critical angle, the system\nshows critical slowing down which is characterized by two dynamic critical\nexponents.\n