In this paper, we discuss first steps towards an explicit numerical description of water-based chemical IOR/EOR processes on the continuum scale. Low-salinity-water and alkaline flooding belong to this family of water based methods. The mechanism governing additional oil production during low-salinity-water flooding is believed to be a combination of several physicochemical processes like multicomponent ion exchange and double layer expansion. These processes are captured in a complex mechanistic model implemented in the open-source flow and transport simulator DuMux. Explicit description, in this context, means to implement the change of wetting properties due to the composition of the injected water by a set of chemical processes linked to concentrations and the concentrations to measured and interpolated flow properties such as relative permeability and capillary pressure saturation functions. The developed models are intended to be used for the design and interpretation of core-flood experiments, and will serve as a basis for upscaling.