Study of Dispersion in Porous Media by Pulsed Field Gradient NMR: Influence of the Fluid Rheology

Pulsed field gradient nuclear magnetic resonance (PFG-NMR) is used to measure the molecular displacements for the flow of a fluid through a capillary tube and a packed bed made of monodisperse PMMA beads. The molecules average displacement is studied using both the formalism of propagators and the cumulant method. In the Poiseuille case, the dispersion coefficients determined by the cumulant method compare satisfactorily with the theoretical values obtained. The technique is then extended to study the flow through a porous medium. We thus analyze Newtonian (water) and non-Newtonian (Xanthan) flows and put a particular emphasis on comparing the dispersion mechanisms between Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids.