Fingering
1. How exactly the concept of ‘fingering’ (tongues of displacing fluid forming @ interface, when displacing fluid moves more easily than the displaced one) needs to be characterized?
(a) as a reservoir heterogeneity problem;
(b) as a fluid displacement problem;
(c) both (a) & (b)
2. Feasible to delineate ‘viscous fingering’ (characterized by directional dependence) from ‘capillary fingering’ @ laboratory-scale?
3. As against the conventional belief, can viscous fingering also end up with enhancing the sweep efficiency?
4. Can we precisely locate the point at which fingering begins?
5. Can we simultaneously expect both
(a) Immiscible viscous fingering (characterized for having an interface, where the main driving force that causes the ‘finger’, patterns at the displacement front, or interface; and it is essentially the viscous gradient caused by a difference on the viscosity of the phases) and
(b) Miscible viscous fingering (characterized for not having an interface between the displacing phases and having strong diffusive effects caused by variations in concentration; and it is a problem governed by (i) mobility gradient or differences between viscous forces, and (ii) diffusive effects or gradients of concentrations)
occurring together at the same time in a reservoir?
6. Whether viscous fingering remains more pronounced during ‘drainage’; or, ‘imbibition’ @ field-scale, during a typical production scenario?
Whether viscous fingering remains sensitive to the ‘direction of saturation changes’ as well – in addition to its dependence on (a) viscosity difference between the displaced and displacing phases; (b) fluid injection rate; and on (c) interfacial tension?
7. Under what circumstances, the length of fingers remains to be linearly proportional to the fluid injection rate?
8. Feasible to control the length and width of the “finger’s growth” (the uneven advance of the injected phase as it moves away from the injection well, while displacing the resident phase from the pore spaces of the reservoir) with distance travelled from the injection well, when the displacing phase remains less viscous or more mobile than the fluid being displaced?
9. How exactly to determine the effects of
(a) free molecular diffusion;
(b) longitudinal dispersion; and
(c) transverse dispersion
on
(i) the shape of the fingers that develop in a reservoir during an unfavorable-mobility-ratio displacement of one miscible phase by another; and on
(ii) the composition of the mixing zone that develops between the two miscible phases?
10. Whether the flow rate in a reservoir at any point of time would go down so low such that the residence time of the fluids to remain in intimate contact becomes larger; and thereby, transverse diffusion/dispersion would be able to modify the finger geometry (from narrow fingers into a slightly bulging finger)?
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