Dynamics of Oil Ganglia During Immiscible Displacement in Water-Wet Porous Media

Strong interest in the dynamic behavior of a population of non-wetting ganglia undergoing immiscible displacement has arisen because this problem is central to the understanding of oil-bank formation during enhanced oil recovery by chemical flooding. The same problem arises in the analysis of the relative permeabilities to any pair of wetting and non-wetting phases, when the saturation of the wetting phase exceeds approx. 0.60. Saturation of a phase is defined as the fraction of the void space that is occupied by that phase. Many drainage or imbibition phenomena fall into this category. This work concentrates on the case where the non-wetting phase is oleic (oil-based), the wetting phase is aqueous, and the objective is enhanced oil recovery. Discussions include theoretical modeling of the porous medium; mobilization, fissioning, and stranding of a solitary oil ganglion; and dynamics of oil-ganglion populations. 39 references.