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Instruments / Technical Area	Publication Details	Published
I13-2-Diamond Manchester Imaging	Three-phase flow displacement dynamics and Haines jumps in a hydrophobic porous medium Abdulla Alhosani , Alessio Scanziani , Qingyang Lin , Ahmed Selem , Ziqing Pan , Martin J. Blunt , Branko Bijeljic Proceedings Of The Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical And Engineering Sciences 476 DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2020.0671 Open Access Show Abstract ▼ Abstract: We use synchrotron X-ray micro-tomography to investigate the displacement dynamics during three-phase—oil, water and gas—flow in a hydrophobic porous medium. We observe a distinct gas invasion pattern, where gas progresses through the pore space in the form of disconnected clusters mediated by double and multiple displacement events. Gas advances in a process we name three-phase Haines jumps, during which gas re-arranges its configuration in the pore space, retracting from some regions to enable the rapid filling of multiple pores. The gas retraction leads to a permanent disconnection of gas ganglia, which do not reconnect as gas injection proceeds. We observe, in situ, the direct displacement of oil and water by gas as well as gas–oil–water double displacement. The use of local in situ measurements and an energy balance approach to determine fluid–fluid contact angles alongside the quantification of capillary pressures and pore occupancy indicate that the wettability order is oil–gas–water from most to least wetting. Furthermore, quantifying the evolution of Minkowski functionals implied well-connected oil and water, while the gas connectivity decreased as gas was broken up into discrete clusters during injection. This work can be used to design CO2 storage, improved oil recovery and microfluidic devices.	Dec 2020
I13-2-Diamond Manchester Imaging	In situ characterization of three‐phase flow in mixed‐wet porous media using synchrotron imaging Alessio Scanziani , Abdulla Alhosani , Qingyang Lin , Catherine Spurin , Gaetano Garfi , Martin J. Blunt , Branko Bijeljic Water Resources Research 56 DOI: 10.1029/2020WR027873 Open Access Show Abstract ▼ Abstract: We use fast synchrotron X‐ray microtomography to understand three‐phase flow in mixed‐wet porous media to design either enhanced permeability or capillary trapping. The dynamics of these phenomena are of key importance in subsurface hydrology, carbon dioxide storage, oil recovery, food and drug manufacturing, and chemical reactors. We study the dynamics of a water‐gas‐water injection sequence in a mixed‐wet carbonate rock. During the initial waterflooding, water displaced oil from pores of all size, indicating a mixed‐wet system with local contact angles both above and below 90°. When gas was injected, gas displaced oil preferentially with negligible displacement of water. This behavior is explained in terms of the gas pressure needed for invasion. Overall, gas behaved as the most nonwetting phase with oil as the most wetting phase; however, pores of all size were occupied by oil, water, and gas, as a signature of mixed‐wet media. Thick oil wetting layers were observed, which increased oil connectivity and facilitated its flow during gas injection. A chase waterflooding resulted in additional oil flow, while gas was trapped by oil and water. Furthermore, we quantified the evolution of the surface areas and both Gaussian and the total curvature, from which capillary pressure could be estimated. These quantities are related to the Minkowski functionals which quantify the degree of connectivity and trapping. The combination of water and gas injection, under mixed‐wet immiscible conditions, leads to both favorable oil flow and significant trapping of gas, which is advantageous for storage applications.	Sep 2020
I13-2-Diamond Manchester Imaging	Determination of contact angles for three-phase flow in porous media using an energy balance Martin J. Blunt , Abdulla Alhosani , Qingyang Lin , Alessio Scanziani , Branko Bijeljic Journal Of Colloid And Interface Science 582, 283 - 290 DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2020.07.152 Open Access Show Abstract ▼ Abstract: Hypothesis: We define contact angles, h, during displacement of three fluid phases in a porous medium using energy balance, extending previous work on two-phase flow. We test if this theory can be applied to quantify the three contact angles and wettability order in pore-scale images of three-phase displacement. Theory: For three phases labelled 1, 2 and 3, and solid, s, using conservation of energy ignoring viscous dissipation ðDa1s cos h12 Da12 /j12 DS1 Þr12 1⁄4 ðDa3s cos h23 þ Da23 /j23 DS3 Þr23 þ Da13 r13 , where / is the porosity, r is the interfacial tension, a is the specific interfacial area, S is the saturation, and j is the fluid–fluid interfacial curvature. D represents the change during a displacement. The third contact angle, h13 can be found using the Bartell-Osterhof relationship. The energy balance is also extended to an arbitrary number of phases. Findings: X-ray imaging of porous media and the fluids within them, at pore-scale resolution, allows the difference terms in the energy balance equation to be measured. This enables wettability, the contact angles, to be determined for complex displacements, to characterize the behaviour, and for input into pore-scale models. Two synchrotron imaging datasets are used to illustrate the approach, comparing the flow of oil, water and gas in a water-wet and an altered-wettability limestone rock sample. We show that in the water-wet case, as expected, water (phase 1) is the most wetting phase, oil (phase 2) is inter- mediate wet, while gas (phase 3) is most non-wetting with effective contact angles of h12 % 48 and h13 % 44, while h23 1⁄4 0 since oil is always present in spreading layers. In contrast, for the altered-wettability case, oil is most wetting, gas is intermediate-wet, while water is most non-wetting with con- tact angles of h12 1⁄4 134 $ 10;h13 1⁄4 119 $ 10, and h23 1⁄4 66 $ 10.	Sep 2020
I13-2-Diamond Manchester Imaging	Dynamics of water injection in an oil-wet reservoir rock at subsurface conditions: Invasion patterns and pore-filling events Abdulla Alhosani , Alessio Scanziani , Qingyang Lin , Sajjad Foroughi , Amer M. Alhammadi , Martin J. Blunt , Branko Bijeljic Physical Review E 102 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.102.023110 Diamond Proposal Number(s): [22070] Show Abstract ▼ Abstract: We use fast synchrotron x-ray microtomography to investigate the pore-scale dynamics of water injection in an oil-wet carbonate reservoir rock at subsurface conditions. We measure, in situ, the geometric contact angles to confirm the oil-wet nature of the rock and define the displacement contact angles using an energy-balance-based approach. We observe that the displacement of oil by water is a drainagelike process, where water advances as a connected front displacing oil in the center of the pores, confining the oil to wetting layers. The displacement is an invasion percolation process, where throats, the restrictions between pores, fill in order of size, with the largest available throats filled first. In our heterogeneous carbonate rock, the displacement is predominantly size controlled; wettability has a smaller effect, due to the wide range of pore and throat sizes, as well as largely oil-wet surfaces. Wettability only has an impact early in the displacement, where the less oil-wet pores fill by water first. We observe drainage associated pore-filling dynamics including Haines jumps and snap-off events. Haines jumps occur on single- and/or multiple-pore levels accompanied by the rearrangement of water in the pore space to allow the rapid filling. Snap-off events are observed both locally and distally and the capillary pressure of the trapped water ganglia is shown to reach a new capillary equilibrium state. We measure the curvature of the oil-water interface. We find that the total curvature, the sum of the curvatures in orthogonal directions, is negative, giving a negative capillary pressure, consistent with oil-wet conditions, where displacement occurs as the water pressure exceeds that of the oil. However, the product of the principal curvatures, the Gaussian curvature, is generally negative, meaning that water bulges into oil in one direction, while oil bulges into water in the other. A negative Gaussian curvature provides a topological quantification of the good connectivity of the phases throughout the displacement.	Aug 2020
I13-2-Diamond Manchester Imaging	Dynamics of fluid displacement in mixed-wet porous media Alessio Scanziani , Qingyang Lin , Abdulla Alhosani , Martin J. Blunt , Branko Bijeljic Proceedings Of The Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical And Engineering Sciences 476 DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2020.0040 Open Access Show Abstract ▼ Abstract: We identify a distinct two-phase flow invasion pattern in a mixed-wet porous medium. Time-resolved high-resolution synchrotron X-ray imaging is used to study the invasion of water through a small rock sample filled with oil, characterized by a wide non-uniform distribution of local contact angles both above and below 90°. The water advances in a connected front, but throats are not invaded in decreasing order of size, as predicted by invasion percolation theory for uniformly hydrophobic systems. Instead, we observe pinning of the three-phase contact between the fluids and the solid, manifested as contact angle hysteresis, which prevents snap-off and interface retraction. In the absence of viscous dissipation, we use an energy balance to find an effective, thermodynamic, contact angle for displacement and show that this angle increases during the displacement. Displacement occurs when the local contact angles overcome the advancing contact angles at a pinned interface: it is wettability which controls the filling sequence. The product of the principal interfacial curvatures, the Gaussian curvature, is negative, implying well-connected phases which is consistent with pinning at the contact line while providing a topological explanation for the high displacement efficiencies in mixed-wet media.	Aug 2020

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