ABSTRACT:

Flow-driven transport of soft particles in porous media occurs in many natural and engineering processes. In the oil industry, gel treatment enhanced oil recovery technique involves injecting preformed particle gels into porous oil reservoir to improve driving-fluid sweep efficiency. Permeability reduction is an important indicator of the efficacy of this process, yet impossible to be measured in the gel injection process. Therefore, it is desired to find the correlation between permeability reduction and measurable properties of the microgel, the flow, and the porous medium. In this talk, I will introduce our work on studying flow-driven transport of soft particles in porous media using a modified capillary bundle model. By formulating and solving the pressure governing differential equation considering microgel confinement induced pressure and viscous pressure, we obtain a quantitative correlation between the total pressure drop and various parameters including concentration, size, and properties of microgels, geometric parameters of the porous medium, and flow rate. Permeability reduction associates with the total pressure drop by Darcy’s law. We compare the predictions from our model with reported experimental data, which shows a good agreement.  

BRIEF ACADEMIC/EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:

Jing Fan is an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering at CCNY.  Prior to joining CCNY in 2016, Jing Fan was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University in 2012-2016, after obtaining her PhD from The University of Hong Kong.

MOST RECENT RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Jing Fan Lab researches transport phenomena in a variety of porous media, ranging from subsurface environments to biological tissues, using microfluidics as an important tool. The lab also aims to advance microfluidic technology and promote its application in fundamental studies of soft matter physics and development of functional materials and structures.