Spatial correlation of contact angle and curvature in pore-space images
File(s)AlRatrout_et_al-2018-Water_Resources_Research.pdf (4.01 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
AlRatrout, A
Blunt, MJ
Bijeljic, B
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
We study the in situ distributions of contact angle and oil/brine interface curvature measured within millimeter-sized rock samples from a producing hydrocarbon carbonate reservoir imaged after waterflooding using X-ray microtomography. We analyze their spatial correlation combining automated methods for measuring contact angles and interfacial curvature (AlRatrout et al., 2017, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2017.07.018), with a recently developed method for pore-network extraction (Raeini et al., 2017, https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.96.013312). The automated methods allow us to study image volumes of diameter approximately 1.9 mm and 1.2 mm long, obtaining hundreds of thousands of values from a data set with 435 million voxels. We calculate the capillary pressure based on the mode oil/brine interface curvature value and associate this value with a nearby throat in the pore space. We demonstrate the capability of our methods to distinguish different wettability states in the samples studied: water-wet, weakly oil-wet, and mixed-wet. The contact angle and oil/brine interface curvature are spatially correlated over approximately the scale of an average pore. There is a wide distribution of contact angles within a single pore. A range of local oil/brine interface curvature is found with both positive and negative values. There is a correlation between interfacial curvature and contact angle in trapped ganglia, with ganglia in water-wet patches tending to have a positive curvature and oil-wet regions seeing negative curvature. We observed a weak correlation between average contact angle and pore size, with the larger pores tending to be more oil-wet.
Date Issued
2018-09-07
Date Acceptance
2018-06-27
Citation
Water Resources Research, 2018, 54 (9), pp.6133-6152
ISSN
0043-1397
Publisher
Wiley
Start Page
6133
End Page
6152
Journal / Book Title
Water Resources Research
Volume
54
Issue
9
Copyright Statement
©2018. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Physical Sciences
Environmental Sciences
Limnology
Water Resources
Environmental Sciences & Ecology
Marine & Freshwater Biology
contact angle
curvature
spatial correlation
wettability
pore network
micro-CT
WETTABILITY LITERATURE SURVEY
SCALE CAPILLARY-PRESSURE
IN-SITU CHARACTERIZATION
X-RAY CT
POROUS-MEDIA
2-PHASE FLOW
MIXED-WET
RECOVERY
ROCK
MICROTOMOGRAPHY
0905 Civil Engineering
0907 Environmental Engineering
1402 Applied Economics
Environmental Engineering
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2018-07-02