Vol. 336 No. 5 (2025)

DOI https://doi.org/10.18799/24131830/2025/5/4732

Development of a collection of microfluidic chips for studying multiphase flows in the oil and gas industry

Relevance. Microfluidic chips simulating the structure of rocks are one of the few methods that allow visualizing microscale hydrodynamic processes occurring in porous media. Aim. To describe the methodology for developing microfluidic chip models of rocks with different permeability and wettability characteristics, on the basis of which a collection of microfluidic chips was developed. The latter is recommended for use in solving problems in the oil and gas industry. Methods. To achieve this goal, laboratory and numerical modeling methods were used. New algorithms for constructing artificial topologies of porous bodies with isotropic and anisotropic permeability characteristics were proposed and tested in practice, and a technique for digitizing natural images was adapted to obtain chip topologies on their basis. Results and conclusions. The obtained results demonstrate the successful implementation of the considered method. With its help various topologies of chip models simulating rock were developed, which easily formed the basis for the development of the collection. Particular attention was paid to the creation of topologies aimed at studying the flow of liquid in the zone of a hydraulic fracturing crack and drilling muds, as well as for modeling flows on the scale of individual pores in the areas of cracks and joints of rocks with different filtration-capacitive characteristics. The main conclusion of the study is that the created collection of microfluidic chips is recommended for use in laboratory modeling of physical and chemical processes in the near-wellbore zone, as well as for testing the developed mathematical models and verifying numerical algorithms.

Keywords:

microfluidics, porous media, core, scale modeling, methodology, algorithms

Authors:

Anton S. Yakimov

Victoria D. Meshkova

Dmitry V. Guzey

Andrey I. Pryazhnikov

Andrey V. Minakov