New concept to describe three-phase capillary pressure-degree of saturation relationship in porous media.

The Leverett concept is used conventionally to model the relationship between the capillary pressures and the degrees of saturation in the water-nonaqueous phase liquid (NAPL)-air three-phase system in porous media. In this paper, the limitation of the Leverett concept that the concept is not applicable in the case of nonspreading NAPLs is discussed through microscopic consideration. A new concept that can be applied in the case of nonspreading NAPLs as well as spreading NAPLs is then proposed. The validity of the proposed concept is confirmed by comparing with past experimental data and simulation results obtained using the conventional model based on the Leverett concept. It is confirmed that the proposed concept can correctly predict the observed distributions of NAPLs, including those of nonspreading ones.