Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

The Visual HPHT Setup for Multiphase Flow in Micro/Porous Systems (HPHT setup) will enable the visual study of multiphase flow at high pressures and high temperatures (HPHT) in pore network micromodels/channels/packed porous media (micro/porous systems). The objective of this RTI application is to fabricate a custom HPHT setup that meets stringent CRN (Canadian Registration Number) requirements and purchase ancillary equipment off the shelf for its operation. There are fewer than 10 HPHT setups worldwide and they only exist for small lab-on-chip pore network micromodels. Advantages of a setup capable of handling larger micro/porous systems include robustness, reduced experimental error, accuracy in imaging, and ease of model fabrication. Micro/porous systems have proven to be very useful in understanding, qualifying, and quantifying aspects of multiphase transport phenomena where capillary behaviour is important. To advance the design, scale-up, and optimise the performance of equipment and operations involving multiphase flow, experimental investigations in micro/porous systems are required to properly understand hydrodynamics, flow behaviour, heat/mass transfer, and communication. Visualisation is a powerful tool to see inside various equipment/media (e.g., pipelines, reactors, microfluidic devices, bubble columns, heat exchangers, mineral floatation, and petroleum reservoirs), enabling us to better comprehend complex transport phenomena, thermodynamics, reactions, and pore scale events. The proposed visual HPHT setup is applicable to research across many industries such as flow and storage in porous rock (CO 2 sequestration, oil recovery, bioremediation, and flow assurance); process/chemical engineering (e.g., micro-reactors, bubble columns, micro separation, lithium ion batteries, nanoparticle fabrication, polymer synthesis, and mineral flotation); mechanical engineering (heat transfer and multiphase flow in microchannels); geophysics (fluid flow induced microseismicity); and medical/biomedical applications (e.g., microfluidics-based genetic testing in the biomedical areas, detection of disease, sequestration of DNA, siRNA studies, cancer therapy, and drug delivery). It is vital to understand and to determine the interaction mechanisms between the phases, flow regime, phase evolution, break-up and coalescence phenomena, phase hold-up, and pressure drop through experimental and modeling studies to effectively operate and optimize the corresponding processes. A visual HPHT setup to hold larger micro/porous systems at more realistic operating conditions would be very helpful for applications such as CO 2 storage, reservoir engineering (gas based enhanced oil recovery, flow assurance), flow induced microseismic events, multiphase pipe flow, separation processes, energy transformation/storage, and biomedical applications.