Collective transport of droplets through porous media

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This work paves the way for future studies involving multicomponent flows in porous media in order to enhance oil extraction. One next step in this direction would be to simulate fluid displacement together with the droplets made of another component. The pore sizes should also be heterogeneous in order to mimic the realistic conditions of a porous medium. Another important application of flowing deformable particles in porous media is the sorting of cells in microfluidic devices. Circulating cells in the human blood system are strongly deformed during each passage across the microvasculature of the organs. However, pathologies, such as pneumonia and cancer, are characterized by stiffer cells that are trapped in the microvasculature triggering serious complications.34–40 Thus, the separation of cells by their stiffness is highly relevant in novel clinical investigation. Preira et al. proposed a microfluidic method to sort the cells of non-adherent cell populations by deformability.41 It consists of a porous medium with a gradient in pore sizes so that stiffer cells are trapped in the region of narrower pores. The results reported here can be extended to cell sorting since the passage of the cells may also depend on collective behavior in dense suspensions.

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