Wettability control on multiphase flow in porous media: A benchmark study on current pore-scale modeling approaches*

Multiphase flow in porous media is important in many natural and industrial processes, including geologic CO2 sequestration, enhanced oil recovery, and water infiltration into soil. Despite its recognized importance, certain aspects of wettability control on multiphase flow continue to challenge our microscopic and macroscopic descriptions. The goal of this work is to validate and improve different pore-scale modeling methodologies by comparing the modeling results from various leading researchers with a benchmark experimental dataset on patterned microfluidic cells (Zhao et al., PNAS 113, 10251–10256 (2016)).

We received submissions from over 10 research groups from around the world, whose modeling approaches include Lattice Boltzmann methods (LBM), smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), Cahn-Hilliard phase-field models, volume of fluid (VoF) methods, level-set methods (LSM), and pore-network models. Despite the high computational demand of simulating the fluid-fluid displacement process at the pore-scale, the modeling results have shown encouraging agreement with the experiments, while also highlighting the need to develop alternative pore-scale modeling methodologies capable of accounting for the 3D nature of interfacial flows in a computationally efficient manner.