The Mechanism behind Erosive Bursts in Porous Media

TL;DR

This paper uncovers that erosive bursts in porous media are caused by the re-opening of clogged pores when pressure differences exceed a threshold, explaining sudden permeability changes.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical model that accurately predicts erosive bursts and their statistical properties, validated against experimental data.

Findings

Erosive bursts occur within a specific pressure gradient range.

Pressure loss jumps follow a power-law distribution.

Permeability jumps depend on particle concentration.

Abstract

Erosion and deposition during flow through porous media can lead to large erosive bursts that manifest as jumps in permeability and pressure loss. Here we reveal that the cause of these bursts is the re-opening of clogged pores when the pressure difference between two opposite sites of the pore surpasses a certain threshold. We perform numerical simulations of flow through porous media and compare our predictions to experimental results, recovering with excellent agreement shape and power-law distribution of pressure loss jumps, and the behavior of the permeability jumps as function of particle concentration. Furthermore, we find that erosive bursts only occur for pressure gradient thresholds within the range of two critical values, independent on how the flow is driven. Our findings provide a better understanding of sudden sand production in oil wells and breakthrough in filtration.