Quantitative Characterization of the Vibratory Enhancement of Organic-Fluid Flow in Porous Media: Integrated Experimental and Theoretical Approach

石油开采和地下水修复的效率受到毛细阻力的限制，毛细阻力会导致有机流体滞留在孔隙中。 已经观察到弹性波可以增加流体提取，尽管还没有对这种现象给出令人满意的解释。 物理认识的缺乏阻碍了储层和含水层增产现场技术的发展。 NAPLs（非水相液体）的振动释放的物理学已经在最近由PI完成的NSF项目中阐明。 这一机制描述了振动如何“轻推”毛细血管屏障上的截留神经节，直到它们被释放。 该机制的推论已在专门设计的实验室实验中得到验证。 的解放机制的制定铺平了道路的预测模型的发展NAPL去除振动多孔网络与现实的几何形状。 开发这样一个定量模型，建立在目前的理解的基础上孔隙尺度的过程，是该项目的目标。 这一目标将通过满足三个具体目标来实现，这三个目标代表了一种综合的实验、理论和数值方法。 目的1. 开发分析工具，用于精确分析神经节释放的动力学，在孔隙水平上，通过振动，描述现象对各种参数的依赖性。 这项工作将表达平衡的力量施加在一个神经节的方程允许物理透明的解决方案。 目标2. 将过程的数值模型“升级”到2D多孔域，作为对简单的1D毛细管的关键改进，使用计算流体动力学。 1D管和更高的维度之间的动员物理的相似性和差异，鉴于增加的孔隙连通性和多个-bracci几何形状，将被照亮。 目标3. 进行全面的平面微模型实验室实验，以记录振动刺激过程，重点是个人截留神经节和整体流动增强的行为。 观察和验证分散有机相中潜在的孔隙尺度过程和相互作用，包括可能的破裂和聚结。 将特别注意验证理论模型和观测之间的一致性。 预测振动刺激结果的可能性与他们的物理理解实现，在两个单独的斑点和批量流量水平，将进行测试。 智力优势：该项目在基础物理学水平上，对社会具有高度意义的具有挑战性的实际需求。 PI最近完成了NSF资助的工作，其中关于振动增强NAPL流的基本机制的新想法已经开发并发表。 PI已经证明了他们的团队所代表的跨学科，协作方法的明显好处。 新的目标是以前的努力的结果，新的阶段将在PI创建的知识基础上开始。 更广泛的影响：毛细作用的基础科学和基于它的技术都将从结果中受益。 结果将是直接感兴趣的一系列科学学科处理弹性波，多相流和多孔介质。 PI之前的NSF项目已经培养了两名年轻的博士。学者，一个在物理学，一个在化学工程。 这种教育影响将继续下去。 这两个PI别列斯涅夫和守夜教本科课程在各自的学科应用物理学和化学工程，其中的结果已经完全整合。 所建立的实验基础设施已经使化学工程系的本科教育受益。

The efficiency of petroleum recovery and groundwater remediation is limited by the resistive capillary forces that cause the entrapment of organic fluids in pores. Elastic waves have been observed to increase the fluid extraction, although no satisfactory explanation of this phenomenon has been given. The lack of physical understanding has hindered the development of field technologies of reservoir and aquifer stimulation. The physics of the vibratory liberation of NAPLs (non-aqueous-phase liquids) has been elucidated in an NSF project completed recently by the PIs. This mechanism describes how vibrations "nudge" the entrapped ganglia over the capillary barrier until they are released. The corollaries of the mechanism have been validated in a specially designed laboratory experiment. The formulation of the liberation mechanism paves the way for the development of a predictive model of NAPL removal by vibrations in porous networks with realistic geometries. Developing such a quantitative model, building on the current understanding of the underlying pore-scale process, is the goal of the project. This goal will be achieved through meeting three specific objectives, representing an integrated experimental, theoretical, and numerical approach. Objective 1. Developing analytical tools for the accurate analysis of the dynamics of ganglion liberation, at a pore level, by vibrations, describing the phenomenon's dependence on various parameters. This work will express the balance of forces exerted upon a ganglion in equations allowing physically transparent solutions. Objective 2. "Upscaling" the process's numerical model to 2D porous domains as a key improvement over simple 1D capillary tubes, with the use of computational fluid dynamics. The similarities and differences in the physics of the mobilization between 1D tubes and higher dimensions, in view of the added pore-connectivity and multiple-menisci geometries, will be illuminated. Objective 3. Conducting comprehensive flat-micromodel laboratory experiments to document the vibratory-stimulation process, focused on both the behavior of individual entrapped ganglia and bulk-flow enhancement. Observing and verifying the underlying pore-scale process and interactions in the dispersed organic phase, including possible break-up and coalescence. Special attention will be given to verifying the agreement between the theoretical models and observations. The possibility of predicting the vibratory-stimulation results with their physical understanding achieved, at both individual-blob and bulk-flow levels, will be tested. Intellectual Merit: The project speaks to a challenging practical need of high significance to society, at the basic-physics level. The PIs have recently completed an NSF-funded effort, in which novel ideas on the underlying mechanism of the vibratory enhancement of NAPL flow have been developed and published. The PIs have demonstrated a clear benefit of the cross-disciplinary, collaborative approach that their team represents. The new goal has evolved as a result of the previous effort, and the new phase will start on the base of knowledge that the PIs have created. Broader Impacts: Both fundamental science of capillarity and the technologies based on it will benefit from the results. The outcomes will be of immediate interest to a range of scientific disciplines dealing with elastic waves, multi-phase flow, and porous media. The PIs' previous NSF project has educated two young Ph. D. scholars, one in geophysics and one in chemical engineering. This education impact will continue. Both PIs Beresnev and Vigil teach undergraduate courses in their respective disciplines of applied geophysics and chemical engineering, in which the results have been fully integrated. The experimental infrastructure created has already benefited undergraduate education in the Chemical Engineering Department.