Transport in Porous Media, Vol.111, No.3, 763-793, 2016
Modeling Soil Permeability When Percolated by Different Soil
This paper presents the results of permeability tests performed using different organic fluids and soil types in order to derive a model to predict soil permeability based on the soil water permeability values. The equation proposed by Nutting (Am Assoc Petrol Geol Bull 14:1337-1349, 1934), which uses the concept of intrinsic permeability, was extended in order to take into account the fluid and solid particle interactions. The properties of soil (plasticity index, I-p, water permeability, k(w) and water saturation, S-rw) and fluid (density, rho, viscosity, mu, and relative dielectric constant, epsilon r) were used in the model. The model results demonstrated good adherence to experimental values (R-2 = 0.914). An error of about 6.4 times for the predicted soil permeability values was obtained, considering a confidence interval of 90 %. Experimental results extracted from technical literature were used to validate the model, using the same fitting constants as the experimental dataset of the authors. The model was able to capture the variation in the experimental results, although more than 10 % of the experimental results are located outside the confidence interval.
Keywords:Permeability;Intrinsic permeability;Organic fluids;Plasticity index;Viscosity;Dielectric constant