A transparent rock experiment shows how stretchy molecules kick up eddies.
For most fluids, an increase in pressure should lead to a burst of speed, like squeezing ketchup from a tube. But when flowing through porous materials such as soil or sedimentary rock, certain liquids slow down under pressure. Pinpointing the cause of this slowing would benefit industries such as environmental clean-up and oil extraction, where pumping one liquid into the ground forces another out; however, such movement is challenging to observe directly.
The fluids of interest, called polymer solutions, are dissolved versions of large stretchy molecule chains common in biology as well as the cosmetics and energy industries. Theoretical studies have suggested that when the chains stretch through a nearly flat channel and then recoil, they generate forces that stir up eddies. But whether that turbulence “arises in realistic 3-D soils, sediments and porous rocks has been hotly debated,” Datta says.
The scientists laced the polymer with fluorescent chips and tracked its movement through the pores under a microscope, recording patchy regions of eddies and measuring how the solution flowed under differing pressure. This confirmed that the macroscale slowing had its microscopic origins where researchers had suspected: polymer chains stretching out and then coiling back as they passed through pores. The findings appeared in Science Advances.
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