Contact: Tom Bultreys and Arjen Mascini
Understanding how fluids occupy and migrate through porous media is of great importance in geological fields such as hydrology and environmental engineering. Two-phase flow (e.g. water/CO2 in subsurface CO2 sequestration or water/non-aqueous phase liquid in environmental engineering) in porous geo-materials is influenced by the connectivity and geometry of the pore space, as well as by solid/fluid/fluid interactions. We are interested in the relation between pore space morphology and averaged properties like relative permeability and capillary pressure, as well as capillary trapping of the non-wetting phase and hysteresis in drainage/imbibition cycles. We investigate this with a combined experimental and numerical approach, employing fast lab-based micro-CT (on the sub-minute time scale) and image-based pore network models.