Vibration-induced mobilization of trapped oil ganglia in porous media: Experimental validation of a capillary-physics mechanism

The development of methods for mobilizing residual organic liquids trapped in porous media is becoming increasingly important as world demand for oil increases and because of the need to remediate aquifers degraded by slow-dissolving organic contaminants. Low-frequency elastic wave stimulation is one such technique, but until recently the lack of a mechanistic understanding of the effects of vibration on mobilization of oil ganglia has prevented the method from being applied predictably in the field. Recently, a simple capillary-physics mechanism has been developed to explain vibration-induced mobilization of a trapped non-wetting organic phase in porous media. Specific predictions that follow from this hypothesized mechanism are that vibrations will be most effective in mobilizing trapped oil when the acceleration amplitude is within an optimal range of values (that depend on the magnitudes of the capillary forces trapping the ganglia and the imposed static pressure gradients) and for sufficiently low vibration frequencies. In this paper we describe two-dimensional glass micromodel experiments that support these predictions.