TY - GEN
T1 - Elastic Turbulence Generates Anomalous Flow Resistance in Porous Media
AU - Browne, Christopher A.
AU - Datta, Sujit S.
N1 - Funding Information:
We acknowledge the anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback; P. Arratia, A. Beris, A. Frishman, M. Graham, S. Haward, J. Kornfield, G. McKinley, A. Morozov, R. Poole, E. Shaqfeh, A. Shen, and H. Stone for insightful discussions; and the Stone laboratory for use of the rheometer. We acknowledge the donors of the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund for partial support of this research through grant PRF 59026-DNI9. This material is also based on work supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (to C.A.B.) under grant no. DGE1656466. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF. C.A.B. was also supported, in part, by the Mary and Randall Hack Graduate Award of the High Meadows Environmental Institute. This publication was supported by the Princeton University Library Open Access Fund.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Institute of Chemical Engineers. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Polymer solutions are often injected in porous media for applications such as oil recovery and groundwater remediation. In many cases, the macroscopic flow resistance abruptly increases above a threshold flow rate in a porous medium, but not in bulk solution. The reason why has been a puzzle for over half a century. Here, by directly visualizing the flow in a transparent 3D porous medium, we demonstrate that this anomalous increase is due to the onset of an elastic instability in which the flow exhibits strong spatio-temporal fluctuations reminiscent of inertial turbulence, despite the vanishingly small Reynolds number. We find that the transition to unstable flow in each pore is continuous, arising due to the increased persistence of discrete bursts of instability above an onset flow rate; however, this onset value varies from pore to pore. Thus, unstable flow is spatially heterogeneous across the different pores of the medium, with unstable and laminar regions coexisting. Guided by these findings, we quantitatively establish that the energy dissipated by unstable pore-scale fluctuations generates the anomalous increase in flow resistance through the entire medium. Thus, by linking the onset of unstable flow at the pore scale to transport at the macroscale, our work provides generally-applicable guidelines for predicting and controlling polymer solution flows.
AB - Polymer solutions are often injected in porous media for applications such as oil recovery and groundwater remediation. In many cases, the macroscopic flow resistance abruptly increases above a threshold flow rate in a porous medium, but not in bulk solution. The reason why has been a puzzle for over half a century. Here, by directly visualizing the flow in a transparent 3D porous medium, we demonstrate that this anomalous increase is due to the onset of an elastic instability in which the flow exhibits strong spatio-temporal fluctuations reminiscent of inertial turbulence, despite the vanishingly small Reynolds number. We find that the transition to unstable flow in each pore is continuous, arising due to the increased persistence of discrete bursts of instability above an onset flow rate; however, this onset value varies from pore to pore. Thus, unstable flow is spatially heterogeneous across the different pores of the medium, with unstable and laminar regions coexisting. Guided by these findings, we quantitatively establish that the energy dissipated by unstable pore-scale fluctuations generates the anomalous increase in flow resistance through the entire medium. Thus, by linking the onset of unstable flow at the pore scale to transport at the macroscale, our work provides generally-applicable guidelines for predicting and controlling polymer solution flows.
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U2 - 10.1126/sciadv.abj2619
DO - 10.1126/sciadv.abj2619
M3 - Conference contribution
C2 - 34739321
AN - SCOPUS:85118687970
T3 - AIChE Annual Meeting, Conference Proceedings
BT - 2021 AIChE Annual Meeting
PB - American Institute of Chemical Engineers
T2 - 2021 AIChE Annual Meeting
Y2 - 15 November 2021 through 19 November 2021
ER -