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  • Letter

Unexpected scaling of interstitial velocities with permeability due to polymer retention in porous media

Shima Parsa1,2,3,*, Ahmad Zareei1,*, Enric Santanach-Carreras4,5, Eliza J. Morris1,6, Ariel Amir1, Lizhi Xiao7,2,†, and David A. Weitz1,8,2,‡

  • 1John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
  • 2Harvard SEAS-CUPB Joint Laboratory on Petroleum Science, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
  • 3School of Physics and Astronomy, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York 14623, USA
  • 4Total SA, Pôle d'Etudes et Recherche de Lacq, BP 47-64170 Lacq, France
  • 5Laboratoire Physico-Chimie des Interfaces Complexes, Total SA-ESPCI-CNRS, Route Départementale 817, 64170 Lacq, France
  • 6Department of Physics and Astronomy, California State University, Sacramento, California 95819, USA
  • 7State Key Laboratory of Petroleum Resources and Prospecting, China University of Petroleum, Beijing 102249, China
  • 8Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †xiaolizhi@cup.edu.cn
  • ‡weitz@seas.harvard.edu
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Phys. Rev. Fluids 6, L082302 – Published 25 August, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.6.L082302

Abstract

Polymer retention from the flow of a polymer solution through porous media results in substantial decrease of the permeability; however, the underlying physics of this effect is unknown. While the polymer retention leads to a decrease in pore volume, here we show that this cannot cause the full reduction in permeability. Instead, to determine the origin of this anomalous decrease in permeability, we use confocal microscopy to measure the pore-level velocities in an index-matched model porous medium. We show that they exhibit an exponential distribution and, upon polymer retention, this distribution is broadened yet retains the same exponential form. Surprisingly, the velocity distributions are scaled by the inverse square root of the permeabilities. We combine experiment and simulation to show these changes result from diversion of flow in the random porous-medium network rather than reduction in pore volume upon polymer retention.

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Phys. Rev. Fluids 6, L082302– Published 25 August, 2021
  • Received 8 February 2021
  • Accepted 26 July 2021
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