Fluid interface stability control

In secondary oil recovery, water is injected into the underground reservoir to push oil out. High efficiency oil production relies on the formation of a stable interface between water and oil. If the interface is unstable, water mixes with oil forming a mixture with low oil content.

It is widely known that when a more viscous fluid (oil) displaces a less viscous fluid (water), the interface is not stable due to the formation of finger-like pattern. This phenomenon is termed as viscous fingering, also called Saffman-Taylor instability. It is a widely observed fluid mechanics phenomenon in nature and industry.

Controlling viscous fingering has always been an piratically important but challenging problem. We demonstrated through both experiment and theory that the viscous fingering can be controlled, by applying an electric field parallel to the flow direction. This is due to the superstition of electro-osmotic flow with pressure-driven flow in porous media, which introduces one degree of freedom for manipulating the pressure field across the oil-water interface.

Read more.

Active control of viscous fingering using electric field.

Relevant work by collaborators:

Electrokinetic control of viscous fingering. (Dr. Mirzadeh and Prof. Bazant).