We investigated the flow of viscoelastic surfactant (VES) solutions, an important type of fracturing fluids for unconventional hydrocarbon recovery, through a diverging–converging microfluidic channel that mimics realistic unit in porous media. Newtonian fluid and viscoelastic hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) solution were used as control groups. We vary Deborah numbers (De) up to 61.2, and found that the flow patterns of HPAM and VES solutions become very different once De ≥ 6.12. This is attributed to different generation mechanisms of viscoelasticity, thus different responses to extensional rates at pore‐throats, for HPAM and VES solutions. It results in significantly smaller pressure drop of VES solutions through the microchannel compared to HPAM solution. It interprets higher filtration loss of VES solution than HPAM in core experiments and in field observations. The set‐up can be generalized as a prototype to effectively evaluate the filtration of fracturing fluids.

中文翻译：

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多孔介质中的粘弹性表面活性剂流体过滤：孔尺度研究

我们通过模拟流体介质中实际单元的发散-会聚微流体通道，研究了粘弹性表面活性剂（VES）溶液（一种非常规烃采收的重要压裂液）的流动。牛顿流体和粘弹性水解聚丙烯酰胺（HPAM）溶液用作对照组。我们改变狄波拉号（德）达61.2，发现HPAM和VES解决方案的流量模式变得一度非常不同德 ≥6.12。这归因于粘弹性的不同生成机理，因此对于HPAM和VES解决方案，其对孔喉处拉伸速率的不同响应。与HPAM解决方案相比，它导致通过微通道的VES解决方案的压降明显较小。在核心实验和现场观察中，它解释了VES溶液比HPAM更高的过滤损失。该设置可以概括为一个原型，以有效评估压裂液的过滤。