Capillary imbibition of confined water in nanopores

The spontaneous capillary imbibition of confined nanopores is investigated using an analytical model that includes the slip effect, wettability and effective viscosity at the water surface interface. The results show that the effective viscosity of confined water is larger than that of bulk water and decreases with diameter and wettability. The effective slip length is negative for a contact angle of 0◦, and the effective slip length is positive and increases with diameter. The results of the presented model show that the capillary imbibition length for nanoconfined water can vary up to 0.389-1.033 times that determined by the Lucas-Washburn equation with no-slip boundary conditions for nanopores due to the effective viscosity and slippage with various dimensions and contact angles. The enhancement increases with diameter and contact angle. These results elucidate the confined movement through nanopores, which can be used to understand fracturing-fluid flow in the nanopores of shale reservoir formations.Cited as: Zeng, F., Zhang, Q., Guo, J., Meng, Y., Shao, X., Zheng, Y. Capillary imbibition of confined water in nanopores. Capillarity, 2020, 3(1): 8-15, doi: 10.26804/capi.2020.01.0

The Effect of Shear Rate on Dynamic Gelation of Phenol Formaldehyde Resin Gel in Porous Media

Polymer gel is the most widely used plugging agent in profile control, whose formula and injected speed are very important process parameters. It is very significant to study the effect of shear rates on the dynamic gelation of polymer gel in porous media for selecting suitable formula and injection speed. Taking the phenol formaldehyde resin gel with static gelation time of 21 h in ampoule bottle as research objective, it was studied the dynamic gelation process and subsequent water flooding in porous media under different injected speeds by a circulated equipment. The results shown that final dynamic gelation time is 2.4 times longer than the static gelation time in porous media. The gel particles are formed and mainly accumulated in the near wellbore zone after dynamic gelation. Injection speed has little effect on the dynamic gelation time in porous media, but has a great effect on the gel strength. The effect of injection speed on dynamic gel strength is evaluated by established the quantitative relationship between shear rate and dynamic gel strength. According to subsequent water flooding results, gel particles have certain plugging capacity in the near wellbore zone. The plugging ability declines obviously with an increasing injection speed. The experimental results provide theoretical support for the successful application of polymer gel used in profile control

Prediction of Rate Constant for Supramolecular Systems with Multiconfigurations

The control of supramolecular systems requires a thorough understanding of their dynamics, especially on a molecular level. It is extremely difficult to determine the thermokinetic parameters of supramolecular systems, such as drug–cyclodextrin complexes with fast association/dissociation processes by experimental techniques. In this paper, molecular modeling combined with novel mathematical relationships integrating the thermodynamic/thermokinetic parameters of a series of isomeric multiconfigurations to predict the overall parameters in a range of pH values have been employed to study supramolecular dynamics at the molecular level. A suitable form of Eyring’s equation was derived and a two-stage model was introduced. The new approach enabled accurate prediction of the apparent dissociation/association (<i>k</i>_off/<i>k</i>_on) and unbinding/binding (<i>k</i>_–r/<i>k</i>_r) rate constants of the ubiquitous multiconfiguration complexes of the supramolecular system. The pyronine Y (PY) was used as a model system for the validation of the presented method. Interestingly, the predicted <i>k</i>_off value ((40 ± 1) × 10⁵ s^–1, 298 K) of PY is largely in agreement with that previously determined by fluorescence correlation spectroscopy ((5 ± 3) × 10⁵ s^–1, 298 K). Moreover, the <i>k</i>_off/<i>k</i>_on and <i>k</i>_–r/<i>k</i>_r for flurbiprofen−β-cylcodextrin and ibuprofen−β-cyclodextrin systems were also predicted and suggested that the association processes are diffusion-controlled. The methodology is considered to be especially useful in the design and selection of excipients for a supramolecular system with preferred association and dissociation rate constants and understanding their mechanisms. It is believed that this new approach could be applicable to a wide range of ligand–receptor supramolecular systems and will surely help in understanding their complex mechanism