Transport of Fluid Mixtures Through Organic and Inorganic Nanochannels: The Main Influence of Organic and Inorganic Poral Throats on the Molecular Distributions and Hydrodynamics of Different Confined Fluid Mixtures

Fluid transport analysis through organic and inorganic nanochannels employing experimental and numerical approaches has become a reliable methodology which helps to understand adsorption and transport properties of different fluids confined in these systems. Several experimental techniques such as X‐ray diffraction, geochemical characterization, and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) images, among others, have revealed that shale reservoirs present mineralogical and pore size heterogeneities with different concentrations of organic matter. Carbon nanotubes and inorganic nanochannels implemented with silicon dioxide and calcite are ideal to model the poral throats of the organic and inorganic matrix of shale reservoirs. Herein, through numerical molecular dynamics simulations, we perform a comprehensive analysis about two‐phase transport properties of shale gas (propane) and shale oil (octane) with different water saturations, confined in hydrophobic (carbon nanotubes) and hydrophilic (calcite and silicon dioxide nanochannels) systems. Our findings show that in hydrophilic poral throats, the flow regime which best describes the transport of propane and octane is the viscous or piston‐like flow with slipping molecular conditions over the surface, owing to gas–liquid or liquid–liquid slip effects with the water adsorbed layer. This effect is more relevant with greater water saturation values. Contrarily, in hydrophobic systems, our results show that the water nanodrop reduces the contribution of viscous flow regime of hydrocarbons, favoring the slip velocity condition at the surface. In both cases (hydrophilic and hydrophobic), slipping conditions with the interface zone and the wall are incremented with increasing water saturation. Finally, we observe that the steric effects (effective roughness) supplied by silicon dioxide and calcites explain the velocity reduction of propane and octane, which is barely modified by the presence of the adsorbed water layer.