Electrokinetics in porous media

This thesis presents the PhD research on electrokinetics in porous media. Electrokinetic phenomena are induced by the relative motion between a fluid and a solid surface and are directly related to the existence of an electric double layer between the fluid and the solid grain surface. Electrokinetic phenomena consist of several different effects such as streaming potential, electroosmosis, electrophoresis. The thesis only focuses on streaming potential and electroosmosis effects in porous media. Below is the abstract of the research.
Chapter 1 introduces the applications of electrokinetic phenomena in geophysical applications and environmental applications, physical chemistry of the interface between solid grains and fluids, and the theoretical backgrounds of streaming potential and electroosmosis effects happening in porous media. Chapter 2 presents an approach to characterize porous media using dc measurements of streaming potential and electroosmosis effects. In chapter 3, we study permeability dependence of streaming potential including the effects of the variation of the zeta potential and surface conductance due to the difference in mineral compositions between samples. In chapter 4 we have carried out streaming potential measurement as a function of electrolyte concentration and temperature for a set of well-defined consolidated samples. in chapter 5 we study the dependence of the zeta potential on types of electrolytes systematically using streaming potential measurements. In chapter 6, we carry out the streaming potential measurements for an artificial sandstone sample saturated with a binary mixture of triethylamine-water with three different mass fractions. In Appendix A, we present the approaches and setups to determine parameters of porous media. In Appendix B, we derive an expression to calculate the zeta potential for divalent electrolytes that is applied in chapter 5 to explain the experimental data.