INFLUENCE OF CAPILLARY FORCES ON THE REGIME OF WATER EVAPORATION IN HIGH-TEMPERATURE ROCKS
G. G. Tsypkina and C. Caloreb UDC 532.546 A one-dimensional problem of the injection of water into a geothermal reservoir saturated with a superheated vapor in the presence of capillary forces has been investigated in an isothermal approximation. It is shown that in wettable rocks the capillary forces increase the velocity of motion of the front and decrease it in unwettable ones. If the capillary forces play a decisive role, then in wettable rocks an extended region of phase transitions is formed behind the evaporation front under the action of capillary forces. aInstitute of the Problems of Mechanics, Russian Academy of Sciences, 101 Vernadskii Ave., Moscow, 119526, Russia; email: tsypkin@ipmnet.ru; bIstituto di Geoscienze e Georisorse-CNR, Area della Ricerca CNR, Italy. Translated from Inzhenerno-Fizicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 81, No. 1, pp. 176-183, January-February, 2008. Original article submitted November 14, 2006.