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Fractals in Porous Media: From Pore to Field Scale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2012

Muhammad Sahimi ,
Hossein Rassamdana  and
Alireza Mehrabi
Muhammad Sahimi
Affiliation:
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1211
Hossein Rassamdana
Affiliation:
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1211
Alireza Mehrabi
Affiliation:
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1211
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Abstract

Two applications of fractal concepts to problems involving porous media are discussed. One of them occurs at the pore level and involves the formation of large molecular aggregates as the result of injecting a fluid into an oil reservoir, or because of compositional changes in the oil. Formation of such aggregates and their precipitation on the pore surfaces cause severe problems for enhanced recovery of oil, and also many processes which use porous catalysts. We argue that these molecular structures are similar to diffusion-limited cluster-cluster aggregates, and small-angle neutron scattering data support our argument. The second application involves field-scale distributions of the porosity and permeability of oil reservoirs. We show that, contrary to the recent assertions that such distributions are described by fractional Brownian motion or fractional Gaussian noise with positive correlations (persistence), they are described by Lévy distributions with negative correlations (anti-persistence).

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 367: Symposium P – Fractal Aspects of Materials , 1994 , 203
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1995

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