Identification of Novel Interfacial Domains in Geologic Media.

Pore-scale fluid processes in geological media are critical for applications such as radioactive waste disposal, carbon sequestration, soil moisture distribution, soil and groundwater pollution, land stability, and oil and gas recovery. The continued improvement of high-resolution image acquisition and processing methods has provided a means to directly measure pore-scale fluid processes for natural geomedia, and to test the usefulness of theoretical and computational models developed to simulate them. High-resolution synchrotron X-ray microtomography is used in combination with advanced visualization tools to characterize fluid distributions and fluid-fluid interfaces in natural geologic media. The studies revealed the presence of fluid-fluid interface associated with macroscopic features such as pits and crevices on the surfaces of the solids. These features and respective fluid interfaces, which are not included in current theoretical or computational models, which may have a significant impact on accurate understanding and simulation of multi-phase flow, energy, heat, and mass transfer, and contaminant transport.