HR: 1340h
AN: H23G-1729    [Abstracts]
TI: A Stereolithography Pore-Throat Model
AU: * Crandall, D
EM: Dustin.Crandall@nr.netl.doe.gov
AF: US DOE, National Energy Technology Laboratory, 610 Collins Ferry Road MS H04, Morgantown, WV 26507-0880, United States
AU: * Crandall, D
EM: Dustin.Crandall@nr.netl.doe.gov
AF: Clarkson University, Dept. of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering PO Box 5725, Potsdam, NY 13699-5725, United States
AU: Ahmadi, G
EM: ahmadi@clarkson.edu
AF: Clarkson University, Dept. of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering PO Box 5725, Potsdam, NY 13699-5725, United States
AU: Ferer, M
EM: mferer@wvu.edu
AF: US DOE, National Energy Technology Laboratory, 610 Collins Ferry Road MS H04, Morgantown, WV 26507-0880, United States
AU: Ferer, M
EM: mferer@wvu.edu
AF: West Virginia University, Dept. of Physics PO Box 6315, Morgantown, WV 26506-6315, United States
AU: Smith, D H
EM: Duane.Smith@netl.doe.gov
AF: US DOE, National Energy Technology Laboratory, 610 Collins Ferry Road MS H04, Morgantown, WV 26507-0880, United States
AU: Smith, D H
EM: Duane.Smith@netl.doe.gov
AF: West Virginia University, Dept. of Physics PO Box 6315, Morgantown, WV 26506-6315, United States
AB: A new experimental, heterogeneous pore-throat model has been designed and fabricated using stereolithography (SL). In SL production, a laser cures a thin layer of photo-sensitive resin on the surface of a vat of liquid resin; a moveable platform then submerges the cured layer and a new layer is cured on top of the previous one, creating a physical model from a computer generated model. This layered fabrication of a computer generated model has enabled the production of an experimental porous medium with improved fluid resistance properties, as compared to previously studied, constant-height etched cells. A uniform distribution of throat widths was randomly placed throughout the pore-throat matrix and the throat height of each throat was assigned to increase the range of viscous and capillary resistances within the physical model. This variation in both throat height and width generated a porous medium with fairly low porosity (43%), permeability (~400 D), and wide range of geometric resistance properties. Experimental, two-phase immiscible drainage studies in the porous flowcell were performed. Analysis of the captured images was performed with open-source image processing software. These analysis techniques utilized the capability of both ImageJ and the Gnu Image Manipulation Program to be customized with ancillary codes. This enabled batch procedures to be created that converted the original grey-scale bitmaps to binary data sets, which were then analyzed with in-house codes. The fractal dimension, D_f, (measured with box-counting) and percent saturation of these experiments were calculated and shown to compare favorably to fractal predictions and previous flowcell studies. Additionally, using the computer generated pore-throat geometry, a computational fluid dynamics model of two- phase flow through the porous medium was created. This model was created using FLUENT code and the Volume of Fluid method. The percent saturation of the less-viscous invading fluid determined with the computational model was shown to be within 2% of comparable experimental studies and the D_f of the invading fluid mass was shown to be within 4% of the experimental studies. This computational model was then expanded to study different fluid and flow properties, highlighting the potential of computational fluid dynamics to study two-phase displacement under conditions similar to geological reservoir conditions.
DE: 1847 Modeling
DE: 1849 Numerical approximations and analysis
DE: 1894 Instruments and techniques: modeling
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting