Electrically assisted mass transport of hydrocarbon compounds in natural porous media has gained much attention not only for environmental mitigation of contaminating oils, but also recovery of reservoir oils over the last two decades. Applying a direct current (DC) to activate ElectroKinetic (EK) phenomena near the solid-liquid interfaces inside the porous media constitutes the basic concept of this method. As a result, the water, solutes, micelles and colloids that reside in the pore space or in the vicinity of the pore walls are transported from one electrode to the other where it can be collected, treated or transformed. In electrically enhanced oil recovery applications, the phenomenon leads to oil transport under an applied electric field in reservoirs. Although there are numerous multi-phase flow models used to predict oil recovery rate under applied and reservoir pressures in petroleum engineering, there is no working model of this transport under an electrical gradient. In this paper, a mathematical model of electrically assisted mass transport of water and immiscible hydrocarbon liquid in water wet porous medium is proposed. The model accounts for contributions of electrokinetic transport and two-phase (oil-water) flow through coupling equations for a well-defined porous system.
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