| Viscous fingering is an important consideration in the oil industry. Viscous fingering can be a serious problem when one is trying to displace viscous oil by waterflooding in the reservoir because viscous fingering that may lead to poor recovery in enhanced oil recovery. Very few studies have been conducted to mathematically model the onset and propagation of viscous fingering. In this numerical and experimental study of viscous fingering in porous media, the Barakat and Clark (1966) scheme is used to solve the governing equations.;This is the first study published that solves viscous fingering in two-dimensions using this method. In addition, the momentum balance, the continuity equation, the energy balance, the solute and the mass balance equations are solved numerically. In the experiments, fresh water was injected at a constant injection pressure into a consolidated porous medium saturated with glycerin. The concentration of glycerin in the solution starts at 20 wt % glycerin and 80 wt. % water, the percentage of glycerin in the solution is increased to 30 wt % glycerin, until the solution reaches 80 wt. % glycerin and 20 wt. % water. This consolidation produces a very unfavorable mobility ratio, leading to provisional viscous fingering that is captured with the help of a digital camera. In this work Berea sandstone rock is used as the porous media. The experimental results were in good agreement when compared with the numerical solutions. |
