A Brief Review of Capillary Number and its Use in Capillary Desaturation Curves

Capillary number, understood as the ratio of viscous force to capillary force, is one of the most important parameters in enhanced oil recovery (EOR). It continues to attract the interest of scientists and engineers, because the nature and quantification of macroscopic capillary forces remain contro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inTransport in porous media Vol. 144; no. 1; pp. 3 - 31
Main Authors Guo, Hu, Song, Kaoping, Hilfer, R.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.08.2022
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Civil Engineering
Classical and Continuum Physics
Desaturation
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Enhanced oil recovery
Experiments
Geotechnical Engineering & Applied Earth Sciences
Hydrogeology
Hydrology/Water Resources
Industrial Chemistry/Chemical Engineering
Macroscopic capillary number
Capillary force
Enhanced oil recovery
Capillary number
Capillary desaturation curve
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Summary:Capillary number, understood as the ratio of viscous force to capillary force, is one of the most important parameters in enhanced oil recovery (EOR). It continues to attract the interest of scientists and engineers, because the nature and quantification of macroscopic capillary forces remain controversial. At least 41 different capillary numbers have been collected here from the literature. The ratio of viscous and capillary force enters crucially into capillary desaturation experiments. Although the ratio is length scale dependent, not all definitions of capillary number depend on length scale, indicating potential inconsistencies between various applications and publications. Recently, new numbers have appeared and the subject continues to be actively discussed. Therefore, a short review seems appropriate and pertinent.
ISSN:0169-3913
1573-1634
DOI:10.1007/s11242-021-01743-7