Experimental Study on Nano-/Microparticles Transport to Characterize Structures in Fractured Porous Media
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Experimental Study on Nano‑/Microparticles Transport to Characterize Structures in Fractured Porous Media Anna Suzuki1 · Junzhe Cui1 · Yuran Zhang2 · Satoshi Uehara1 · Kewen Li2 · Roland N. Horne2 · Takatoshi Ito1 Received: 5 May 2019 / Accepted: 27 February 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Nano- and microparticles are expected to have several functionalities, and the ability to control size and shape is an advantage of using nano-/microparticles. This study investigated a possibility that the sizes of nano-/microparticle can be used to extract new information on structures in a fractured medium. Flow experiments were conducted to observe the particle transport in a micromodel on which a single fracture and rock matrix (grain and pore space) was fabricated on a silicon wafer. Water and nano-/microparticles were injected into the micromodel, and the droplets were collected at the outlet. Tunable Resistive Pulse Sensing (TRPS) was used to measure the frequency distributions of particle diameters from each droplet at each time. The result shows that the larger particles were observed only at early time, while the smaller particles were detected at early time and also at late time. This indicates that the larger particles flow in a fracture quickly, while smaller particles migrate through both fracture and matrix over a wider range of time. Particles with different sizes transport through fractured media differently depending on the fracture structures. The tracer response of nano- and microparticles may be useful to evaluate the fracture structures and the flow properties for different flow pathways. Keywords Particle tracers · Fracture · Flow experiment · Micromodel
1 Introduction Fluid flow with nano- and microsized particles has been investigated in several fields (e.g., medicine, optics, and electronics, reviewed by Taylor et al. 2013) as well as geological systems (Banfield and Zhang 2001; Rivas-Sanchez et al. 2009; Alonsoa et al. 2009; Agista et al. 2018). As commonly used in drug delivery, geological developments can use nano- and microparticles as tracers, which may provide more effective information for reservoir characterization (Li et al. 2014; Burtman et al. 2015). The ability to control size and shape (Walliser et al. 2015) is an advantage of using nano-/microparticles. For instance, fluids in fractured rocks are expected to flow through fractures and pore throats in the rock matrix with apertures of a few nano- or millimeters, and it would be useful if injected particles could flow through * Anna Suzuki [email protected] 1
Institute of Fluid Science, Tohoku University, 2‑1‑1, Katahira, Aoba‑ku, Sendai, Miyagi 980‑8577, Japan
Department of Energy Resources Engineering, Stanford University, 367 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
2
the fractures and the pore throats and serve as indicators of the fracture apertures using the particle sizes. Relationships between pore structures and transport properties of porous rocks (i.e.,
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