Copyright © 2011 M. F. El-Amin and Shuyu Sun. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

We introduce 2D numerical investigations of the problem of gravity and inlet/outlet location effects of water-oil two-phase cocurrent imbibition in a porous medium. Three different cases of side-, top-, and bottom-inlet location are considered. Two-dimensional computations are carried out using the finite element method. Intensive comparisons are done between considering and neglecting gravity effect on water saturation, pressures of water and oil as well as water velocity. Results are introduced either in curves or as 2D visualization graphs. The results indicate that the buoyancy effects due to gravity force take place depending on inlet location. So, the buoyancy force in the momentum equations of the co-current imbibition model cannot be neglected as done by several previous studies. Also, we note that the 2D zero gravity model has a uniform flow and may be represented as 1D flow unlike the 2D nonzero gravity model showing a nonuniform flow.