We have established a microfluidic setup for the generation of oil droplets and manipulation of their movement in a thin capillary. With a customized chip geometry, the setup can be used for various other applications, e.g. micro-reactors, cell sorting, drug delivery and discovery, cellular analysis, tissue engineering and diagnostic sensing.
Residual oil exists in the form of separate droplets surrounded by the reservoir brine. Mobilization of the droplets out of pore throat of reservoir rocks by the injected brine of a different salinity and ionic composition is a principal physico-chemical process for the success of recovery by the so-called smart waterflooding.
We have constructed a microfluidic setup to generate oil droplets and study the movement of a single droplet in a thin capillary under conditions resembling the petroleum reservoir. The project aims to understand the working mechanisms of smart waterflooding and to optimize the composition of the water injected to flood a petroleum reservoir.
Apart from droplet and particle generation, microfluidics has been widely applied in various fields, e.g. micro-reactors, cell sorting, drug delivery and discovery, cellular analysis, tissue engineering and diagnostic sensing.
With precise control and manipulation of fluids in small volume, microfluidic devices offer a number of benefits over systems with conventional sizes. For example,
• They allow the handling and analysis of smaller volume fluid, which offers convenience for the analysis of high-cost samples.
• They can significantly shorten the experimental time due to the compact size.
• They offer high-throughput solutions with the possibility to process multiple analytes simultaneously.
The geometry of the chip can be designed and customized according to the demand of application.
Whoever interested in the technique is welcomed to discuss potential projects and collaborations. For further details, please contact Tian Wang and Alexander Shapiro