Flow enhancement of water-based nanoparticle dispersion through microscale sedimentary rocks

• DOI: 10.1038/srep08702
• Publication Date: 2015-03-03T10:20:45Z
• Authors: Haiyang Yu; Youwei He; Peng Li; Shuang Li; Tiantian Zhang; Elena Rodriguez-Pin; Song Du; Chenglong Wang; Shiqing Cheng; Christopher W. Bi...; Steven L. Bryant; Chun Huh
• Keywords: 0103 physical sciences; 01 natural sciences; Article; 532

AbstractUnderstanding and controlling fluids flow at the microscale is a matter of growing scientific and technological interest. Flow enhancements of water-based nanoparticle dispersions through microscale porous media are investigated through twelve hydrophilic sedimentary rocks with pore-throat radius between 1.2 and 10 μm, which are quantitatively explained with a simple model with slip length correction for Darcy flow. Both as wetting phase, water exhibited no-slip Darcy flow in all cores; however, flow enhancement of nanoparticle dispersions can be up to 5.7 times larger than that of water and it increases with the decreasing of pore-throat radius. The experimental data reveals characteristic slip lengths are of order 500 and 1000 nm for 3M® and HNPs-1 nanoparticles, respectively, independent of the lithology or nanoparticle concentration or shear rate. Meanwhile, the phenomenon of flow degradation is observed for HNPs-2 nanoparticles. These results explore the feasible application of using nanoparticle dispersions to control flow at the microscale.