Spontaneous imbibition enables the elegant propelling of nano-flows because of the dominance of capillarity at small length scales. The imbibition kinetics are, however, solely determined by the static host geometry, the capillarity, and the fluidity of the imbibed liquid. This makes active control particularly challenging. Here we show for aqueous electrolyte imbibition in nanoporous gold that...

An experimental method was developed to measure both steam-water and air-water capillary pressures using an X-ray CT technique. We conducted spontaneous water imbibition and gravity drainage in ceramic core samples for steam-water and air-water systems respectively. The results were compared, and it was found that the steam-water capillary pressures were significantly less than the airwater cap...

Cocurrent spontaneous imbibition (COCSI) of an aqueous phase into matrix blocks arising from capillary forces is an important mechanism for petroleum recovery from fractured petroleum reservoirs. In this work, the modeling of countercurrent imbibition is used to develop the appropriate scaling equations. Considering the imbibition process and the water and oil movement respectively as the wet p...

We have studied spontaneous imbibition fronts generated by capillary rise between two roughened glass plates, the separation d of which varied between 10 and 50 microm. Perfect agreement with Washburn's law was obtained. We have determined the roughness exponent chi of the fronts, and found chi=0.81+/-0.01 for small length scales. Above a certain crossover length xi, it reached chi=0.58+/-0.04,...

Coal-measure mudstone is a typical dual-porosity media, and grouting in a matrix system is dominantly controlled by the imbibition effect for silica sol. This paper studies the imbibition effect using mudstone in the Huaibei mining area and silica sol as grouting material as an example. Groutability, driving force, and diffusion difficulty affecting the imbibition effect were tested by a mercur...