Transport of large particles in flow through porous media

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Abstract
There is considerable evidence indicating that significant reduction in the efficiency of many processes in porous media, such as enhancing oil recovery, heterogeneous chemical reactions, deep-bed filtration, gel permeation, and liquid chromatography, is due to the reduction in the permeability of the pore space. This reduction is due to the transport of particles, whose sizes are comparable with those of the pores, and the subsequent blocking of the pores by various mechanisms. In this paper we develop a novel Monte Carlo method for theoretical modeling of this phenomenon. Particles of various sizes are injected into the medium, and their migration in the flow field is modeled by a random walk whose transition probability is proportional to the local pore fluxes. Pores are blocked and their flow capacity is reduced (or vanished) when large particles pass through them (and reduce their flow capacity) or totally block them. The permeability of the medium can ultimately vanish and, therefore, this phenomenon is a percolation process. Various quantities of interest such as the variations of the permeability with process time and the distribution of pore-plugging times are computed. The critical exponent characterizing the vanishing of the permeability near the percolation threshold appears to be different from that of percolation conductivity. The agreement between our results and the available experimental data is excellent.

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