705 research outputs found
Drainage in a model stratified porous medium
We show that when a non-wetting fluid drains a stratified porous medium at
sufficiently small capillary numbers Ca, it flows only through the coarsest
stratum of the medium; by contrast, above a threshold Ca, the non-wetting fluid
is also forced laterally, into part of the adjacent, finer strata. The spatial
extent of this partial invasion increases with Ca. We quantitatively understand
this behavior by balancing the stratum-scale viscous pressure driving the flow
with the capillary pressure required to invade individual pores. Because
geological formations are frequently stratified, we anticipate that our results
will be relevant to a number of important applications, including understanding
oil migration, preventing groundwater contamination, and sub-surface CO
storage
Local pore size correlations determine flow distributions in porous media
The relationship between the microstructure of a porous medium and the
observed flow distribution is still a puzzle. We resolve it with an analytical
model, where the local correlations between adjacent pores, which determine the
distribution of flows propagated from one pore downstream, predict the flow
distribution. Numerical simulations of a two-dimensional porous medium verify
the model and clearly show the transition of flow distributions from
-function-like via Gaussians to exponential with increasing disorder.
Comparison to experimental data further verifies our numerical approach.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, supplemental materia
Microwave Dielectric Heating of Drops in Microfluidic Devices
We present a technique to locally and rapidly heat water drops in
microfluidic devices with microwave dielectric heating. Water absorbs microwave
power more efficiently than polymers, glass, and oils due to its permanent
molecular dipole moment that has a large dielectric loss at GHz frequencies.
The relevant heat capacity of the system is a single thermally isolated
picoliter drop of water and this enables very fast thermal cycling. We
demonstrate microwave dielectric heating in a microfluidic device that
integrates a flow-focusing drop maker, drop splitters, and metal electrodes to
locally deliver microwave power from an inexpensive, commercially available 3.0
GHz source and amplifier. The temperature of the drops is measured by observing
the temperature dependent fluorescence intensity of cadmium selenide
nanocrystals suspended in the water drops. We demonstrate characteristic
heating times as short as 15 ms to steady-state temperatures as large as 30
degrees C above the base temperature of the microfluidic device. Many common
biological and chemical applications require rapid and local control of
temperature, such as PCR amplification of DNA, and can benefit from this new
technique.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure
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