Influence of wetting conditions on drainage in porous media: a microfluidic study

This paper presents some experimental results on two-phase flows in model two-dimensional (2D) porous media with different wetting properties. Standard microfluidic techniques are used to fabricate the 2D micromodels that consist of a network of straight microchannels having heterogeneous sizes. The invasion mechanism is analyzed quantitatively for partial and total wetting conditions, and for various stable viscosity ratios and capillary pressure heterogeneity. For capillary numbers ranging from 10(-7) to 10(-2), we observe a transition between capillary fingering and a stable front. The capillary fingering regime exhibits differences between partial and complete wetting systems: The front width in complete wetting is larger. Simple models are proposed to account for these regimes and indicate that the differences between the systems are likely to be due to the flow of the displaced fluid in the complete wetting situation.