Capillary trapping induced slow evaporation in nanochannels

摘要: Abstract Unconventional reservoirs are massive and providing an increasing share of global energy with a broad group stakeholders in academia, industry government. The size pores unconventional can be down to nanometers, necessitating deeper fundamental understanding fluid phase properties at nanoscale. In this paper, we investigate capillary trapping induced slow evaporation n-pentane nanochannel arrays through isothermal pressure drawdown mimic the hydrocarbon release nanopores low-permeability reservoirs. Importantly, forms during reservoir reduction process significantly impedes liquid evaporation. Compared case without any trapping, rate is ~16 times lower, which unfavorably affects gas recovery. addition, observe corner flow assisting nanochannel, important experimental evidence towards previous theoretical study. brief, our work reveals type anomalous nanoscale that fundamentally relevant shale modeling finding indicates regulating appropriate plays key role efficiently extracting gas.