Immiscible Displacement in the Interacting Capillary Bundle Model Part II. Applications of Model and Comparison of Interacting and Non-Interacting Capillary Bundle Models

In the first part of this work (Dong et al., Transport Porous Media, 59, 1–18, 2005), an interacting capillary bundle model was developed for analysing immiscible displacement processes in porous media. In this paper, the second part of the work, the model is applied to analyse the fluid dynamics of immiscible displacements. The analysis includes: (1) free spontaneous imbibition, (2) the effects of injection rate and oil–water viscosity ratio on the displacement interface profile, and (3) the effect of oil–water viscosity ratio on the relative permeability curves. Analysis of a non-interacting tube bundle model is also presented for comparison. Because pressure equilibration between the capillaries is stipulated in the interacting capillary model, it is able to reproduce the behaviour of immiscible displacement observed in porous media which cannot be modelled by using non-interacting tube bundle models.     

Relative Permeability Analysis of Tube Bundle Models,Including Capillary Pressure

The analytical equations for calculating two-phase flow, including local capillary pressures, are developed for the bundle of parallel capillary tubes model. The flow equations that are derived were used to calculate dynamic immiscible displacements of oil by water under the constraint of a constant overall pressure drop across the tube bundle. Expressions for averaged fluid pressure gradients and total flow rates are developed, and relative permeabilities are calculated directly from the two-phase form of Darcy's law. The effects of pressure drop and viscosity ratio on the relative permeabilities are discussed. Capillary pressure as a function of water saturation was delineated for several cases and compared to a steady-state mercury-injection drainage type of capillary pressure profile. The bundle of serial tubes model (a model containing tubes whose diameters change randomly at periodic intervals along the direction of flow), including local Young-Laplace capillary pressures, was analyzed with respect to obtaining relative permeabilities and macroscopic capillary pressures. Relative permeabilities for the bundle of parallel tubes model were seen to be significantly affected by altering the overall pressure drop and the viscosity ratio; relative permeabilities for the bundle of serial tubes were seen to be relatively insensitive to viscosity ratio and pressure, and were consistently X-like in profile. This work also considers the standard Leverett (1941) type of capillary pressure versus saturation profile, where drainage of a wetting phase is completed in a step-wise steady fashion; it was delineated for both tube bundle models. Although the expected increase in capillary pressure at low wetting-phase saturation was produced, comparison of the primary-drainage capillary pressure curves with the pseudo-capillary pressure profiles, that are computed directly using the averaged pressures during the displacements, revealed inconsistencies between the two definitions of capillary pressure.     

Relative Permeability Analysis of Tube Bundle Models

The analytical solution for calculating two-phase immiscible flow through a bundle of parallel capillary tubes of uniform diametral probability distribution is developed and employed to calculate the relative permeabilities of both phases. Also, expressions for calculating two-phase flow through bundles of serial tubes (tubes in which the diameter varies along the direction of flow) are obtained and utilized to study relative permeability characteristics using a lognormal tube diameter distribution. The effect of viscosity ratio on conventional relative permeability was investigated and it was found to have a significant effect for both the parallel and serial tube models. General agreement was observed between trends of relative permeability ratios found in this work and those from experimental results of Singhal et al. (1976) using porous media consisting of mixtures of Teflon powder and glass beads. It was concluded that neglecting the difference between the average pressure of the non-wetting phase and the average pressure of the wetting phase (the macro-scale capillary pressure) – a necessary assumption underlying the popular analysis methods of Johnson et al. (1959) and Jones and Roszelle (1978) – was responsible for the disparity in the relative permeability curves for various viscosity ratios. The methods therefore do not account for non-local viscous effects when applied to tube bundle models. It was contended that average pressure differences between two immiscible phases can arise from either capillary interfaces (micro-scale capillary pressures) or due to disparate pressure gradients that are maintained for a flow of two fluids of viscosity ratio that is different from unity.     

Experiment and Capillary Bundle Network Model of Micro Polymer Particles Propagation in Porous Media

In this paper, a microscopic visualization experiment is conducted to explore the heterogeneous flow pattern of micro polymer particles in micron pore. A capillary bundle network model for micro polymer particles in porous media is established. The migration and retention mechanism of polymer particles can be clearly observed in the experiment and simulated with this numerical model. The result demonstrates that the block of large particles is one of the main factors by which micro polymer particles increase the flow resistance. The simulation results are consistent with the experimental results.     

Analytical Model for The Capillary Pressure Gradient in Oil–Water–Rock System

A simplified analytical expression for the capillary pressure gradient in homogeneous porous media is proposed. Basic assumptions are: (1) the three phase contact angle between two fluids and porous rock is finite, (2) the surface area of contact between two fluids is small in comparison with contact surface areas between each fluid and porous rock in the unit volume of the system under consideration, (3) the model corresponds to conditions when both phases are continuous.     

多孔介质渗透率的一种新分形模型

多孔介质的渗流特性是油气藏工程、地下水资源利用、高放废物深地质处置等实际工程领域的热门研究问题．基于分形理论及多孔介质由一束面积大小不等的椭圆形毛细管组成的假设,本文建立了流体在分形多孔介质中渗流时的绝对渗透率及相对渗透率的分形渗透率模型．结果表明,绝对渗透率是最大和最小孔隙面积、分形维数、形状因子ε的函数,且当ε =1时,本文模型可以简化成Yu与Cheng模型;而非饱和多孔介质的相对渗透率与饱和度和多孔介质微结构参数有关．将本文提出的渗透率分形模型预测与实验测量数据及其他模型结果进行对比,显示它们整体吻合很好．     

Fluid transfer between tubes in interacting capillary bundle models

The interacting capillary bundle model proposed by Dong et al. [Dong, M., Dullien, F.A.L., Zhou, J.: Trans. Porous Media 31, 213–237 (1998); Dong, M., Dullien, F.A.L., Dai, L., Li, D.: Trans. Porous Media 59, 1–18 (2005); Dong, M., Dullien, F.A.L., Dai, L., Li, D.: Trans. Porous Media 63, 289–304 (2006)] has simulated correctly various aspects of immiscible displacement in porous media, such as oil production histories at different viscosity ratios, the effects of water injection rate and of the oil–water viscosity ratio on the shape of the displacement front and the independence of relative permeabilities of the viscosity ratio. In the interacting capillary bundle model pressure equilibrium was assumed at any distance x measured along the bundle. Interaction between the capillaries also results in transfer of fluids across the capillaries. In the first part of this paper the process of fluid transfer between two capillaries is analysed and an algebraic expression for this flow is derived. Consistency with the assumption of pressure equilibration requires that all transfer must take place at the positions of the oil/water menisci in the tubes without any pressure drop. It is shown that fluid transfer between the tubes has no effect on the predictions obtained with the model. In the second part of the paper the interacting tube bundle model is made more realistic by assuming fluid transfer between the tubes all along the single phase flow regions across a uniform resistance, resulting in pressure differences throughout the single phase regions between the fluids present in the different tubes. The results of numerical simulations obtained with this improved interacting capillary bundle model show only small differences in the positions of the displacement front as compared with the predictions of the idealized model.     

Dynamic Network Model of Mobility Control in Emulsion Flow Through Porous Media

Modeling the flow of emulsion in porous media is extremely challenging due to the complex nature of the associated flows and multiscale phenomena. At the pore scale, the dispersed phase size can be of the same order of magnitude of the pore length scale and therefore effective viscosity models do not apply. A physically meaningful macroscopic flow model must incorporate the transport of the dispersed phase through the porous material and the changes on flow resistance due to drop deformation as it flows through pore throats. In this work, we present a dynamic capillary network model that uses experimentally determined pore-level constitutive relationships between flow rate and pressure drop in constricted capillaries to obtain representative transient macroscopic flow behavior emerging from microscopic emulsion flow at the pore level. A parametric analysis is conducted to study the effect of dispersed phase droplet size and capillary number on the flow response to both emulsion and alternating water/emulsion flooding in porous media. The results clearly show that emulsion flooding changes the continuous-phase mobility and consequently flow paths through the porous media, and how the intensity of mobility control can be tuned by the emulsion characteristics.     

Phenomenological Meniscus Model for Two-Phase Flows in Porous Media

A new macroscale model of a two-phase flow in porous media is suggested. It takes into consideration a typical configuration of phase distribution within pores in the form of a repetitive field of mobile menisci. These phase interfaces give rise to the appearance of a new term in the momentum balance equation, which describes a vectorial field of capillary forces. To derive the model, a phenomenological approach is developed, based on introducing a special continuum called the Meniscus-continuum. Its properties, such as a unique flow velocity, an averaged viscosity, a compensation mechanism and a duplication mechanism, are derived from a microscale analysis. The closure relations to the phenomenological model are obtained from a theoretical model of stochastic meniscus stream and from numerical simulations based on network models of porous media. The obtained transport equation remains hyperbolic even if the capillary forces are dominated, in contrast to the classic model which is parabolic. For the case of one space dimension, the analytical solutions are obtained, which manifest non-classical effects as double displacement fronts or counter-current fronts.     

Models for Ground Water Flow: A Numerical Comparison Between Richards' Model and the Fractional Flow Model

In this paper we compare two models for flow in porous media. The first is the well known Richards' equation, which is based on the assumption that the air in the unsaturated zone has infinite mobility. This means that it models a single phase. In the second and more general full two-phase approach, the air is considered as a separate phase. Here, we use the fractional flow equation.We study the difference between the two models numerically by varying the relative contribution of the different physical terms (the gravity and the total velocity) in the fractional flow equation. Richards' equation is considered as the limit of the fractional flow approach when the mobility of the air-phase tends to infinity. In particular, we are interested in determining the parameter intervals where the two models differ significantly, and we will quantify the asymptotic behavior.The equations are studied in the two-dimensional (2D) case. The study is based on a relative permeability depending quadratically on the saturation, and a capillary pressure expressed by a cubic function of the saturation.     

A Markov Chain Model for Effective Relative Permeabilities and Capillary Pressure

We present a new method for calculating the effective two-phase parameters of one-dimensional randomly heterogeneous porous media, which avoids the timeconsuming use of simulations on explicit realizations. The procedure is based on the steady state saturation distribution. The idea is to model the local variation of saturation and saturation dependent parameters as Markov chains, in such a way that the effective parameters are given by the asymptotic expectations of the chains. We derive the exact asymptotic moment equations and solve them numerically, based on their second order approximation. The method determines the effective parameters to a high degree of accuracy, even with large variations in rock properties. In particular, the capillary limit and viscous limit effective parameters are recovered exactly. The applicability of the effective parameters in the unsteady state case is studied by comparing the displacement production profiles in heterogeneous media and their homogenized counterpart.     

Experimental study of two-phase flow in three sandstones. II. Capillary pressure curve measurement and relative permeability pore space capillary models

By means of the porous plate method and mercury porosimetry intrusion tests, capillary pressure curves of three different sandstones were measured. The testing results have been exploited jointly with three relative permeability models of the pore space capillary type (Burdine’s model type), these models are widely used and in rather distinct fields. To do so, capillary pressure has been correlated to saturation degree using six of the most popular relations encountered in the literature. Model predictions were systematically compared to the experimentally measured relative permeabilities presented in the first part of this work. Comparison indicated that the studied models underestimate the water relative permeability and over-estimate that of the non-wetting phase. Moreover, this modeling proves to be unable to locate the significant points that are the limits of fields of saturation where the variation of the relative permeabilities becomes consequent. We also showed that, if pore structure is modeled as a “bundle of capillary tubes”, model predications are independent of the capillary pressure curve measuring method.     

Efficiency of Capillary Imbibition Dominated Displacement of Nonwetting Phase by Wetting Phase in Fractured Porous Media

The critical and optimum injection rates as well as the critical fracture capillary number for an efficient displacement process are determined based on the experimental and numerical modeling of the displacement of nonwetting phase (oil) by wetting phase (water) in fractured porous media. The efficiency of the process is defined in terms of the nonwetting phase displaced from the system per amount of wetting phase injected and per time. Also, the effects of injection rate on capillary imbibition transfer dominated two-phase flow in fractured porous media are clarified by visualizing the experiments. The results reveal that as the injection rate is increased, fracture pattern begins to become an effective parameter on the matrix saturation distribution. As the rate is lowered, however, the system begins to behave like a homogeneous system showing a frontal displacement regardless the fracture configuration.     

A Fractal Model for Oil Transport in Tight Porous Media

Tight porous media are mainly composed of micro/nano-pores and throats, which leads to obvious microscale effect and nonlinear seepage characteristics. Based on the capillary bundle model and the fractal theory, a new nonlinear seepage equation was deduced, and a further fractal permeability model was obtained for oil transport in tight porous media by considering the effect of the boundary layer. The predictions of the model were then compared with experimental data to demonstrate that the model is valid. This model clarifies the oil transport mechanisms in tight porous media: the effective permeability is no longer a constant value and is governed by properties of tight porous media and oil. Furthermore, parameters influencing effective permeability were analyzed. The model can accurately present the seepage characteristics of the oil in tight porous media and provide a reliable basis for the development of unconventional reservoirs.     

A Discussion of the Effect of Tortuosity on the Capillary Imbibition in Porous Media

In the past decades, there was considerable controversy over the Lucas–Washburn (LW) equation widely applied in capillary imbibition kinetics. Many experimental results showed that the time exponent of the LW equation is less than 0.5. Based on the tortuous capillary model and fractal geometry, the effect of tortuosity on the capillary imbibition in wetting porous media is discussed in this article. The average height growth of wetting liquid in porous media driven by capillary force following the [`(L)] _s(t) ~ t^1/2D_T{\overline L _{\rm {s}}(t)\sim t^{1/{2D_{\rm {T}}}}} law is obtained (here D _T is the fractal dimension for tortuosity, which represents the heterogeneity of flow in porous media). The LW law turns out to be the special case when the straight capillary tube (D _T = 1) is assumed. The predictions by the present model for the time exponent for capillary imbibition in porous media are compared with available experimental data, and the present model can reproduce approximately the global trend of variation of the time exponent with porosity changing.     

Elliptic Regions and Stable Solutions for Three-Phase flow in Porous Media

In the limit of zero capillary pressure, solutions to the equations governing three-phase flow, obtained using common empirical relative permeability models, exhibit complex wavespeeds for certain saturation values (elliptic regions) that result in unstable and non-unique solutions. We analyze a simple but physically realizable pore-scale model: a bundle of cylindrical capillary tubes, to investigate whether the presence of these elliptic regions is an artifact of using unphysical relative permeabilities. Without gravity, the model does not yield elliptic regions unless the most non-wetting phase is the most viscous and the most wetting phase is the least viscous. With gravity, the model yields elliptic regions for any combination of viscosities, and these regions occupy a significant fraction of the saturation space. We then present converged, stable numerical solutions for one-dimensional flow, which include capillary pressure. These demonstrate that, even when capillary forces are small relative to viscous forces, they have a significant effect on solutions which cross or enter the elliptic region. We conclude that elliptic regions can occur for a physically realizable model of a porous medium, and that capillary pressure should be included explicitly in three-phase numerical simulators to obtain stable, physically meaningful solutions which reproduce the correct sequence of saturation changes.     

Petrophysical and Capillary Properties of Compacted Salt

This paper reports experimental results that demonstrate petrophysical and capillary characteristics of compacted salt. The measured data include porosity, gas permeability, pore size distribution, specific surface area, and gas-brine breakthrough and capillary pressure. Salt samples employed in the experiments were prepared by compacting sodium chloride granulates at high stresses for several hours. They represent an intermediate consolidation stage of crushed salt under in-situ conditions. The porosity and permeability of compacted salt showed similar trends to those expected in backfilled regions of waste repositories excavated in salt rock. The correlation between the measured porosity and permeability seems to be independent of the compaction parameters for the range examined in this study. The correlation also shows a different behaviour from that of rock salt. The data of all petrophysical properties show that the pore structure of compacted salt can be better characterized by fracture permeability models rather than capillary bundle ones. Simple creep tests, conducted on the fully-brine-saturated compacted salt samples, yielded similar strain rates to those obtained by a steady-state mechanical model developed from the tests on fully brine-saturated granular salt. A modified procedure is proposed for the evaluation of restored-state capillary pressure data influenced by the material creep. The characteristic parameters for the capillary behaviour of compacted salt are determined by matching the Brooks-Corey and van Genuchten models with the measured data. The Leverett functions determined with different methods agree well.     

A Film-Flow Model to Describe Free Water Transport during Drying of a Hygroscopic Capillary Porous Medium

In this work, a two-phase film-flow model in a hygroscopic capillary tube is developed and extended to describe the two-phase capillary viscous transport in a network of parallel capillary tubes in terms of relative permeabilities. This film-flow approach is further considered to predict the longitudinal moisture transport in oak wood during drying. Numerical results obtained from this prediction are compared with data of convective drying experiments performed on samples of this wood. The comparison seems to confirm the physical relevance of a film-flow model to correctly represent the moisture transfer until the hygroscopic regime is reached.     

Three-Phase Flow Modelling Using Pore-Scale Capillary Pressures and Relative Permeabilities for Mixed-Wet Media at the Continuum-Scale

When regions of three-phase flow arise in an oil reservoir, each of the flow parameters, i.e. capillary pressures and relative permeabilities, are generally functions of two phase saturations and depend on the wettability state. The idea of this work is to generate consistent pore-scale based three-phase capillary pressures and relative permeabilities. These are then used as input to a 1-D continuum core- or reservoir-scale simulator. The pore-scale model comprises a bundle of cylindrical capillary tubes, which has a distribution of radii and a prescribed wettability state. Contrary to a full pore-network model, the bundle model allows us to obtain the flow functions for the saturations produced at the continuum-scale iteratively. Hence, the complex dependencies of relative permeability and capillary pressure on saturation are directly taken care of. Simulations of gas injection are performed for different initial water and oil saturations, with and without capillary pressures, to demonstrate how the wettability state, incorporated in the pore-scale based flow functions, affects the continuum-scale displacement patterns and saturation profiles. In general, wettability has a major impact on the displacements, even when capillary pressure is suppressed. Moreover, displacement paths produced at the pore-scale and at the continuum-scale models are similar, but they never completely coincide.