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Capillarity 2018, 1(3): 19-26 https://doi.org/10.26804/capi.2018.03.01
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Recent advances in spontaneous imbibition with different boundary conditions

Show Author's Information Qingbang Meng1,  Jianchao Cai2( )
Key Laboratory of Tectonics and Petroleum Resources, China University of Geosciences, Ministry of Education,  Wuhan 430074, P. R. China
Institute of Geophysics and Geomatics, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, P. R. China
Keywords:
Spontaneous imbibition, boundary condition, relative permeability, capillary back pressure
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Meng Q, Cai J. Recent advances in spontaneous imbibition with different boundary conditions. Capillarity, 2018, 1(3): 19-26. https://doi.org/10.26804/capi.2018.03.01
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Abstract Full text About this article

Spontaneous imbibition plays an important role in many practical processes, such as oil recovery, hydrology, and environmental engineering. The past few years have witnessed a rapid development in the mechanism analysis and industry applications of spontaneous imbibition. In this paper, we focus on boundary conditions of spontaneous imbibition, which has important effects on the imbibition rate and efficiency. Various boundary conditions are first generated using different capillary model and introduced focusing on the fundamental physical mechanisms. Then, the studies of spontaneous imbibition in core scale are reviewed. The feature is discussed and the relative permeability for co- and counter-current imbibition is analyzed. The scaling of imbibition data with different boundary conditions is also presented by combination of experimental and numerical methods. An analytical model to describe spontaneous imbibition is provided at the end.


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About this article

Recent advances in spontaneous imbibition with different boundary conditions

Show Author's information Qingbang Meng1, Jianchao Cai2( )
Key Laboratory of Tectonics and Petroleum Resources, China University of Geosciences, Ministry of Education,  Wuhan 430074, P. R. China
Institute of Geophysics and Geomatics, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, P. R. China

Abstract

Spontaneous imbibition plays an important role in many practical processes, such as oil recovery, hydrology, and environmental engineering. The past few years have witnessed a rapid development in the mechanism analysis and industry applications of spontaneous imbibition. In this paper, we focus on boundary conditions of spontaneous imbibition, which has important effects on the imbibition rate and efficiency. Various boundary conditions are first generated using different capillary model and introduced focusing on the fundamental physical mechanisms. Then, the studies of spontaneous imbibition in core scale are reviewed. The feature is discussed and the relative permeability for co- and counter-current imbibition is analyzed. The scaling of imbibition data with different boundary conditions is also presented by combination of experimental and numerical methods. An analytical model to describe spontaneous imbibition is provided at the end.

Keywords: Spontaneous imbibition, boundary condition, relative permeability, capillary back pressure

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Publication history
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Publication history

Received: 17 September 2018
Revised: 07 October 2018
Accepted: 09 October 2018
Published: 15 October 2018
Issue date: September 2018

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© The Author(s) 2018

Acknowledgements

The project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51804284; 41722403; 41572116), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. XDA14010302), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (China University of Geosciences, Wuhan) (No. CUG180611).

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This article is distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY-NC-ND) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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