Abstract
Surface tension is one of the important properties in enhanced oil recovery, particularly for gas-liquid displacement in porous media and separation process. It acts to keep interfaces of two immiscible fluids smooth, where two or more curved interfaces create pressure differences. The estimation and measurement of surface tension currently are made by capillary rise such as the ring method and the pendant drop method. In this paper, the lattice-gas automata method is being explored to be used in estimating the surface tension between two immiscible fluids in a porous medium. The main idea of immiscible lattice-gas model in this paper was the introduction of two species of particles (red for gas and blue for oil) to represent two immiscible fluids. The great advantage of the model was that interfaces and the interfacial dynamics were generated spontaneously. The surface tension was estimated by the Laplace’s equation and ranged between 0.00585 –0.00603. In general, simulation results are in good quantitative estimation and this simulation also allow us to model liquid-liquid or gas-liquid interactions. The aim was to see the suitability of lattice-gas automata in representing two immiscible fluids of oil and gas.
