Impact of wettability correlations on multiphase flow through porous media

TL;DR

This study investigates how heterogeneity in wettability at the pore scale influences multiphase flow in porous media, using simulations to relate wettability correlations to large-scale flow properties.

Contribution

It introduces a mesoscopic simulation approach to analyze the impact of spatially correlated wettability heterogeneity on multiphase flow.

Findings

Wettability heterogeneity significantly affects flow patterns.

Spatial correlations in wettability influence large-scale flow behavior.

The study establishes links between pore-scale wettability and macroscopic flow properties.

Abstract

In the last decades, significant progress has been made in understanding the multiphase displacement through porous media with homogeneous wettability and its relation to the pore geometry. However, the role of wettability at the scale of the pore remains still little understood. In the present study the displacement of immiscible fluids through a two-dimensional porous medium is simulated by means of a mesoscopic particle approach. The substrate is described as an assembly of non-overlapping circular disks whose preferential wettability is distributed according to prescribed spatial correlations, from pore scale up to domains at system size. We analyze how this well-defined heterogeneous wettability affects the flow and try to establish a relationship among wettability-correlations and large-scale properties of the multiphase flow.