Understanding the transport of three fluid phases through porous media has important applications in subsurface contaminant remediation, oil and gas recovery, and geological CO₂ sequestration. Existing transport models may be improved by including physical phenomena that govern fluid flow at the pore scale. In particular, thermodynamic arguments suggest that hysteresis...
This research examines the independent and combined effects of drainage and imbibition flowrate on nonwetting phase capillary trapping in a two-phase, porous medium system. A uniform system of cubic arrangement and non-uniform systems of both cubic and rhombohedral arrangements were examined in order to analyze and compare the nonwetting phase...
Geologic CO₂ sequestration is a climate change mitigation strategy that involves the injection of supercritical CO₂ into deep underground rock formations. This thesis focuses on capillary trapping in which capillary forces immobilize CO₂ bubbles at the pore scale. During injection of supercritical CO₂, brine is displaced in what is known...
Multi-phase flow in porous media includes many instances of subsurface flow. Three-phase flow in particular is important in situations of enhanced oil recovery, CO2 sequestration, and groundwater remediation. Many studies have been performed on how two fluid phases (oil/water or air/water) behave in porous media, but very few studies exist...
Systems that contain multi-phase flow in porous media are of interest in diverse fields including environmental engineering, hydrogeology, and petroleum engineering etc. One of the main descriptors of multi-phase flow in porous media is the relationship between capillary pressure and fluid saturation. Capillary pressure is inherently a pore-scale variable and...
This work examines the impact of a viscosity force parameter, fluid velocity, and a capillary force parameter, interfacial tension, on the saturation, morphology, and topology of NW fluid in Bentheimer sandstone after primary imbibition, drainage, and secondary imbibition. Brine and air (used as a proxy for supercritical CO₂) flow experiments...
The flow of multiple immiscible fluids within a porous medium controls many natural and engineered systems in the environment including: geologic CO2 sequestration, enhanced oil recovery from underground reservoirs, and contaminant remediation of groundwater. The need to understand how fluids are transported and distributed in these processes is important for...
The wetting of a surface by a liquid is a crucial part of many natural and industrial processes. Despite numerous existing studies, some elements of wetting-dewetting such as contact angle variation are still poorly understood. Knowledge of contact angle behavior during the flow is necessary for modeling fluid displacements in...
Geologic CO₂ sequestration is a climate change mitigation strategy that prevents CO₂ emissions to the atmosphere by capturing CO₂ gasses from large point source emissions streams and then pressurizing and pumping the supercritical-state CO₂ into underground geologic storage reservoirs. Once underground, CO₂ is prevented from buoyant migration to the surface...
Engineered capillary barriers typically consist of two layers of granular materials designed so that the contrast in sediment hydrologic properties and sloping interface retains infiltrating water in the upper layer. We report here on the results of two bench-top capillary barrier experiments, and associated modeling. These experiments were conducted to...