Identification of the Transition Between Two Phase Flow Regimes in Sphere Packs
Abstract
This thesis presents an experimental investigation of the simultaneous immiscible two phase flow, in three dimensional porous media made up of glass beads. The objective of this thesis was to find the scaling relation between the volumetric flow rate, Q, and the differential pressure, dP, during steady state flow, in addition to identifying the transition point between flow regimes.
The experimental set up consisted of two pumps, each pumping their own fluid, distilled water and oil (EXXSOL D60) through the porous media. Two different porous media were tested - one containing glass beads of size 1 mm and one containing glass beads of 0.2 mm in diameter. Flow rates were run in the range from 0.001 ml/min to 10 ml/min, and the corresponding steady state differential pressure was measured for each run.
For the porous medium containing the 1 mm diameter glass beads, a transition between two different flow regimes was observed for a capillary number, Ca, of 1E-5. For the highest flow rates, in the viscous dominated regime, the scaling coefficient was close to 1, implying a linear relationship. When decreasing the flow rate, a transition towards a more capillary dominated flow regime was observed, with a scaling coefficient of approximately 0.47. For the porous medium containing the 0.2 mm diameter glass beads, no such transition point towards a non-linear regime was observed.