Primary drainage and waterflood capillary pressures and fluid displacement in a mixed-wet microporous reservoir carbonate
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Published version
Author(s)
Zhang, Guanglei
Regaieg, Mohamed
Blunt, Martin J
Bijeljic, Branko
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
A porous plate technique was developed to measure capillary pressure during both primary drainage and waterflooding in a reservoir carbonate rock sample. During primary drainage, a water-wet ceramic disc at the end of the sample allowed brine to be displaced but prevented the escape of oil while oil was injected at a sequence of increasing pressures. Saturation was measured using high-resolution three-dimensional X-ray imaging from the differences in greyscale (X-ray adsorption) between dry, partially-saturated and completely-saturated images. A two-step displacement process was observed, with the resolvable macro-pores displaced by oil followed by invasion into unresolved micro-porosity with a variation of two orders of magnitude in capillary pressure. The sample was then exposed to crude oil to render some of the solid surfaces oil-wet. A small amount of spontaneous imbibition (displacement at a positive capillary pressure) was observed in micro-porosity. Then an oil-wet porous plate was added to the outlet, so that water could be injected at a sequence of increasing pressures while only oil could escape. As expected, the oil-wet macro-porosity was displaced by brine at a low capillary pressure with a magnitude similar to that seen during drainage (but of opposite sign). Remarkably though the displacement of oil from micro-porosity occurred at a capillary pressure approximately an order of magnitude lower than in drainage, implying the existence of mixed-wettability with fluid menisci that are approximately minimal surfaces. The work demonstrates that in mixed-wet media displacement of oil from micro-porosity can occur at much lower capillary pressures that would be estimated from primary drainage results using the calculated pore size distribution.
Date Issued
2023-10
Date Acceptance
2023-08-03
Citation
Journal of Hydrology, 2023, 625 (Part B)
ISSN
0022-1694
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Hydrology
Volume
625
Issue
Part B
Copyright Statement
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2023.130022
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
130022
Date Publish Online
2023-08-24