TY - JOUR
T1 - Pore-Scale Flow Characterization of Polymer Solutions in Microfluidic Porous Media
AU - Browne, Christopher A.
AU - Shih, Audrey
AU - Datta, Sujit S.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors acknowledge P.D. Olmsted, R.K. Prud'homme, and H.A. Stone for stimulating discussions. Acknowledgment is made to the Donors of the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund for partial support of this research. This material is also based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (to C.A.B.) under Grant No. DGE-1656466. 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 National Science Foundation. C.A.B. was supported in part by the Mary and Randall Hack Graduate Award of the Princeton Environmental Institute. A.S. was supported in part by the Lidow Thesis Fund at Princeton University and the Dede T. Bartlett P03 Fund for Student Research through the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
PY - 2020/3/1
Y1 - 2020/3/1
N2 - Polymer solutions are frequently used in enhanced oil recovery and groundwater remediation to improve the recovery of trapped nonaqueous fluids. However, applications are limited by an incomplete understanding of the flow in porous media. The tortuous pore structure imposes both shear and extension, which elongates polymers; moreover, the flow is often at large Weissenberg numbers, Wi, at which polymer elasticity in turn strongly alters the flow. This dynamic elongation can even produce flow instabilities with strong spatial and temporal fluctuations despite the low Reynolds number, Re. Unfortunately, macroscopic approaches are limited in their ability to characterize the pore-scale flow. Thus, understanding how polymer conformations, flow dynamics, and pore geometry together determine these nontrivial flow patterns and impact macroscopic transport remains an outstanding challenge. This review describes how microfluidic tools can shed light on the physics underlying the flow of polymer solutions in porous media at high Wi and low Re. Specifically, microfluidic studies elucidate how steady and unsteady flow behavior depends on pore geometry and solution properties, and how polymer-induced effects impact nonaqueous fluid recovery. This work thus provides new insights for polymer dynamics, non-Newtonian fluid mechanics, and applications such as enhanced oil recovery and groundwater remediation.
AB - Polymer solutions are frequently used in enhanced oil recovery and groundwater remediation to improve the recovery of trapped nonaqueous fluids. However, applications are limited by an incomplete understanding of the flow in porous media. The tortuous pore structure imposes both shear and extension, which elongates polymers; moreover, the flow is often at large Weissenberg numbers, Wi, at which polymer elasticity in turn strongly alters the flow. This dynamic elongation can even produce flow instabilities with strong spatial and temporal fluctuations despite the low Reynolds number, Re. Unfortunately, macroscopic approaches are limited in their ability to characterize the pore-scale flow. Thus, understanding how polymer conformations, flow dynamics, and pore geometry together determine these nontrivial flow patterns and impact macroscopic transport remains an outstanding challenge. This review describes how microfluidic tools can shed light on the physics underlying the flow of polymer solutions in porous media at high Wi and low Re. Specifically, microfluidic studies elucidate how steady and unsteady flow behavior depends on pore geometry and solution properties, and how polymer-induced effects impact nonaqueous fluid recovery. This work thus provides new insights for polymer dynamics, non-Newtonian fluid mechanics, and applications such as enhanced oil recovery and groundwater remediation.
KW - elastic turbulence
KW - flow instabilities
KW - microfluidics
KW - polymers
KW - porous media
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U2 - 10.1002/smll.201903944
DO - 10.1002/smll.201903944
M3 - Review article
C2 - 31602809
AN - SCOPUS:85074005297
SN - 1613-6810
VL - 16
JO - Small
JF - Small
IS - 9
M1 - 1903944
ER -