Interrelationship of Wettability, Initial Water Saturation, Aging Time, and Oil Recovery by Spontaneous Imbibition and Waterflooding

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xianmin Zhou ◽  
Norman R. Morrow ◽  
Shouxiang Ma
Keyword(s):  
Aging Time ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Water Saturation ◽  
Spontaneous Imbibition ◽  
Initial Water

Influence of Initial Water Saturation on Recovery by Spontaneous Imbibition in Gas/Water/Rock Systems and the Calculation of Relative Permeability

2006 ◽  
Vol 9 (04) ◽  
pp. 295-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kewen Li ◽  
Kevin Chow ◽  
Roland N. Horne
Keyword(s):  
Relative Permeability ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Water Saturation ◽  
Water Injection ◽  
Spontaneous Imbibition ◽  
Rock Properties ◽  
Initial Water ◽  
Gas Recovery ◽  
Water Imbibition ◽  
Theoretical Predictions

Summary It has been a challenge to understand why recovery by spontaneous imbibition could both increase and decrease with initial water saturation. To this end, mathematical models were developed with porosity, permeability, viscosity, relative permeability, capillary pressure, and initial water saturation included. These equations foresee that recovery and imbibition rate can increase, remain unchanged, or decrease with an increase in initial water saturation, depending on rock properties, the quantity of residual gas saturation, the range of initial water saturation, and the units used in the definitions of gas recovery and imbibition rate. The theoretical predictions were verified experimentally by conducting spontaneous water imbibition at five different initial water saturations, ranging from 0 to approximately 50%. The effects of initial water saturation on residual saturation, relative permeability, capillary pressure, imbibition rate, and recovery in gas/water/rock systems by cocurrent spontaneous imbibition were investigated both theoretically and experimentally. Water-phase relative permeabilities and capillary pressures were calculated with the experimental data of spontaneous imbibition. Experimental results in different rocks were compared. Introduction Spontaneous water imbibition is an important mechanism during water injection. Prediction of recovery and imbibition rate by spontaneous water imbibition is essential to evaluate the feasibility and the performance of water injection. For example, is water injection effective in the case of high initial water saturation in reservoirs? Answers to such a question may be found by investigating the effect of initial water saturation on spontaneous water imbibition. It has been observed experimentally that initial water saturation affects recovery and production rate significantly (Blair 1964; Zhou et al. 2000; Viksund et al. 1998; Cil et al. 1998; Tong et al. 2001; Li and Firoozabadi 2000; Akin et al. 2000). However, the experimental observations from different authors (Zhou et al. 2000; Cil et al. 1998; Li and Firoozabadi 2000; Akin et al. 2000) are not consistent. On the other hand, few studies have investigated the effect of initial water saturation on recovery and imbibition rate theoretically, especially in gas reservoirs. Using numerical-simulation techniques, Blair (1964) found that the quantity and the rate of oil produced after a given period of imbibition increased with a decrease in initial water saturation for countercurrent spontaneous imbibition. Zhou et al. (2000) found that both imbibition rate and final oil recovery in terms of oil originally in place (OOIP) increased with an increase in initial water saturation, whereas oil recovery by waterflooding decreased. Viksund et al. (1998) found that the final oil recovery (OOIP) by spontaneous water imbibition in Berea sandstone showed little variation with a change in initial water saturation from 0 to approximately 30%. For the chalk samples tested by Viksund et al. (1998), the imbibition rate first increased with an increase in initial water saturation and then decreased slightly as initial water saturation increased above 34%.Cil et al. (1998) reported that the oil recovery (in terms of recoverable oil reserves) for zero and 20% initial water saturation showed insignificant differences in behavior. However, the oil recovery for initial water saturation above 20% increased with an increase in initial water saturation. Li and Firoozabadi (2000) found that the final gas recovery in the units of gas originally in place (GOIP) by spontaneous imbibition decreased with an increase in initial water saturation in both gas/oil/rock and gas/water/rock systems. The imbibition rate (GOIP/min) increased with an increase in initial water saturation at early time but decreased at later time. Akin et al. (2000) found that the residual oil saturation was unaffected significantly by initial water saturation. In this study, equations, derived theoretically, were used to study the effect of initial water saturation on gas recovery and imbibition rate. The equations correlate recovery, imbibition rate, initial water saturation, rock/fluid properties, and other parameters. Experiments of spontaneous water imbibition in gas-saturated rocks were conducted to confirm the theoretical predictions. The effect of rock properties on gas recovery and imbibition rate was also studied. An X-ray CT scanner was used to monitor the distribution of the initial water saturation to confirm that the initial distribution of the water saturation was uniform. In this study, we only focused on cocurrent spontaneous imbibition. It was assumed that there were no chemical reactions or mass transfer between gas and liquid.

Residual Gas Saturation Revisited

2001 ◽  
Vol 4 (06) ◽  
pp. 467-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Apostolos Kantzas ◽  
Minghua Ding ◽  
Jong Lee
Keyword(s):  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Water Saturation ◽  
Spontaneous Imbibition ◽  
Gas Reservoirs ◽  
Initial Water ◽  
Gas Saturation ◽  
Water Imbibition ◽  
Residual Gas ◽  
Trapped Gas ◽  
Residual Gas Saturation

Summary The determination of residual gas saturation in gas reservoirs from long spontaneous and forced-imbibition tests is addressed in this paper. It is customarily assumed that when a gas reservoir is overlaying an aquifer, water will imbibe into the gas-saturated zone with the onset of gas production. The process of gas displacement by water will lead to forced imbibition in areas of high drawdown and spontaneous imbibition in areas of low drawdown. It is further assumed that in the bulk of the reservoir, spontaneous imbibition will prevail and the reservoir will be water-wet. A final assumption is that the gas behaves as an incompressible fluid. All these assumptions are challenged in this paper. A series of experiments is presented in which it is demonstrated that the residual gas saturation obtained by a short imbibition test is not necessarily the correct residual gas saturation. Imbibition tests by different methods yield very different results, while saturation history and core cleaning also seem to have a strong effect on the determination of residual gas saturation. It was found, in some cases, that the residual gas by spontaneous imbibition was unreasonably high. This was attributed to weak wetting conditions of the core (no water pull by imbibition). It is expected that this work will shed some new light on an old, but not-so-well-understood, topic. Introduction When a porous medium is partially or fully saturated with a nonwetting phase, and a wetting phase is allowed to invade the porous medium, the process is called imbibition. For the problem addressed in this work, the nonwetting phase is assumed to be gas, and the wetting phase is assumed to be the aquifer water. If the medium is dry and the water is imbibing, then the imbibition is primary (Swi=0). If the water is already in the medium, the imbibition is secondary (Swi>0). If there is no driving force other than the affinity to wet, the imbibition is spontaneous. If there is any other positive pressure gradient, the imbibition is called forced. Numerous papers have been written on the subject of residual oil saturation from imbibition, but fewer have been prepared on the subject of residual gas saturation from imbibition. The common perception is that many of the principles that cover oil and gas reservoirs are the same. Agarwal1 addressed the relationship between initial and final gas saturation from an empirical perspective. He worked with 320 imbibition experiments and segmented the database to develop curve fits for common rock classifications. Land2 noted that available data seemed to fit very well to an empirical functional form given asEquation 1 In this model, the only free parameter is the maximum observable trapped nonwetting phase saturation corresponding to Sgr (Sgi=1). This expression does not predict residual phase saturation, only how residual saturation scales with initial saturation. Zhou et al.3 studied the effect of wettability, initial water saturation, and aging time on oil recovery by spontaneous imbibition and waterflooding. A correlation between water wetness and oil recovery by waterflooding and spontaneous imbibition was observed. Geffen et al.4 investigated some factors that affect the residual gas saturation, such as flooding rate, static pressure, temperature, sample size, and saturation conditions before flooding. They found that water imbibition on dry-plug experiments was different from waterflooding experiments with connate water. However, they concluded that the residual gas saturation from the two types of experiments was essentially the same. Keelan and Pugh5 concluded that trapped gas saturation existed after gas displacement by wetting-phase imbibition in carbonate reservoirs. Their experiments showed that the trapped gas varied with initial gas in place and that it was a function of rock type. Fishlock et al.6 investigated the residual gas saturation as a function of pressure. They focused on the mobilization of residual gas by blowdown. Apparently, the trapped gas did not become mobile immediately as it expanded. The gas saturation had to increase appreciably to a critical value for gas remobilization. Tang and Morrow7 introduced the effect of composition on the microscopic displacement efficiency of oil recovery by waterflooding and spontaneous imbibition. They concluded that the cation valency was important to crude/oil/rock interactions. Chierici et al.8 tested whether a reliable value of reserves could be obtained from reservoir past-production performance by analyzing results from six gasfield experiments. They concluded that different gas reservoir aquifer systems could show the same pressure performance in response to a given production schedule. Baldwin and Spinler9 investigated residual oil saturation starting from different initial water saturation using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). They concluded that at low initial water saturation, the presence of a significant waterfront during spontaneous water imbibition indicated that the rate of water transport was less than that of oil. At high initial water saturation, the more uniform saturation change during spontaneous water imbibition indicated that the rate of water transport was greater than that of oil. The pattern of spontaneous imbibition depended on sample wettability, with less effect from frontal movement in less water-wet samples. Pow et al.10 addressed the imbibition of water in fractured gas reservoirs. Field and laboratory information suggested that a large amount of gas was trapped through fast water imbibition through the fractures and premature water breakthrough. The postulation was made that such gas reservoirs would produce this gas if and when the bypassed gas was allowed to flow to the production intervals under capillary-controlled action. The question of whether the rate of imbibition could enhance the production of this trapped gas was raised. Preliminary experiments on full-diameter core pieces showed that the rates of imbibition were extremely slow and that if the different imbibition experiments were performed in full-diameter plugs, the duration of the experiments would be prohibitively long. These experiments formulated the experimental strategy presented in the following sections.

scholarly journals Study on the Impacts of Capillary Number and Initial Water Saturation on the Residual Gas Distribution by NMR

Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (14) ◽  
pp. 2714
Author(s):  
Tao Li ◽  
Ying Wang ◽  
Min Li ◽  
Jiahao Ji ◽  
Lin Chang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Capillary Number ◽  
Water Saturation ◽  
Transverse Relaxation Time ◽  
Spontaneous Imbibition ◽  
Trapping Efficiency ◽  
Gas Distribution ◽  
Initial Water ◽  
Capillary Trapping ◽  
Residual Gas ◽  
The Difference

The determination of microscopic residual gas distribution is beneficial for exploiting reservoirs to their maximum potential. In this work, both forced and spontaneous imbibition (waterflooding) experiments were performed on a high-pressure displacement experimental setup, which was integrated with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to reveal the impacts of capillary number (Ca) and initial water saturation (Swi) on the residual gas distribution over four magnitudes of injection rates (Q = 0.001, 0.01, 0.1 and 1 mL/min), expressed as Ca (logCa = −8.68, −7.68, −6.68 and −5.68), and three different Swi (Swi = 0%, 39.34% and 62.98%). The NMR amplitude is dependent on pore volumes while the NMR transverse relaxation time (T2) spectrum reflects the characteristics of pore size distribution, which is determined based on a mercury injection (MI) experiment. Using this method, the residual gas distribution was quantified by comparing the T2 spectrum of the sample measured after imbibition with the sample fully saturated by brine before imbibition. The results showed that capillary trapping efficiency increased with increasing Swi, and above 90% of residual gas existed in pores larger than 1 μm in the spontaneous imbibition experiments. The residual gas was trapped in pores by different capillary trapping mechanisms under different Ca, leading to the difference of residual gas distribution. The flow channels were mainly composed of micropores (pore radius, r < 1 μm) and mesopores (r = 1–10 μm) at logCa = −8.68 and −7.68, while of mesopores and macropores (r > 10 μm) at logCa = −5.68. At both Swi= 0% and 39.34%, residual gas distribution in macropores significantly decreased while that in micropores slightly increased with logCa increasing to −6.68 and −5.68, respectively.

scholarly journals Comparative Study of Using Sea-Water for Enhanced Oil Recovery in Carbonate and Sandstone Reservoirs: Effects of Temperature and Aging Time on Oil Recovery

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Madi Abdullah Naser ◽  
Mohamed Erhayem ◽  
Ali Hegaig ◽  
Hesham Jaber Abdullah ◽  
Muammer Younis Amer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Aging Time ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Sea Water ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Recovery Process ◽  
Spontaneous Imbibition ◽  
Effect Of Temperature ◽  
Injection Process ◽  
Reservoir Conditions ◽  
The Impact

Oil recovery process is an essential element in the oil industry, in this study, a laboratory study to investigate the effect of temperature and aging time on oil recovery and understand some of the mechanisms of seawater in the injection process. In order to do that, the sandstone and carbonate cores were placed in the oven in brine to simulate realistic reservoir conditions. Then, they were aged in crude oil in the oven. After that, they were put in the seawater to recover, and this test is called a spontaneous imbibition test. The spontaneous imbibition test in this study was performed at room temperature to oven temperature 80 oC with different sandstone and carbonate rock with aging time of 1126 hours. The result shows that the impact of seawater on oil recovery in sandstone is higher than carbonate. At higher temperature, the oil recovery is more moderate than low temperature. Likewise, as the aging time increase for both sandstone and carbonate rocks the oil recovery increase. 

Effect of Initial Water Saturation on Bypassed Oil Recovery during CO2 Injection at Different Miscibility Conditions

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (7) ◽  
pp. 4114-4121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyvan Kazemi ◽  
Behzad Rostami ◽  
Maryam Khosravi ◽  
Danial Zeinabady Bejestani
Keyword(s):  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Water Saturation ◽  
Co2 Injection ◽  
Initial Water ◽  
Bypassed Oil

Pore-Scale Modeling of Wettability Effects and Their Influence on Oil Recovery

1999 ◽  
Vol 2 (01) ◽  
pp. 25-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.B. Dixit ◽  
S.R. McDougall ◽  
K.S. Sorbie ◽  
J.S. Buckley
Keyword(s):  
Crude Oil ◽  
Capillary Pressure ◽  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Aging Process ◽  
Water Saturation ◽  
Contact Angles ◽  
Initial Water ◽  
Water Imbibition ◽  
Pore Level ◽  
Capillary Pressure Curves

Summary The wettability of a crude oil/brine/rock system influences both the form of petrophysical parameters (e.g., Pc and krw/kro) and the structure and distribution of remaining oil after secondary recovery. This latter issue is of central importance for improved oil recovery since it represents the "target" oil for any IOR process. In the present study, we have developed a three-dimensional network model to derive capillary pressure curves from nonuniformly wetted (mixed and fractionally wet) systems. The model initially considers primary drainage and the aging process leading to wettability alterations. This is then followed by simulations of spontaneous water imbibition, forced water drive, spontaneous oil imbibition and forced oil drive—i.e., we consider a complete flooding sequence characteristic of wettability experiments. The model takes into account many pore level flow phenomena such as film flow along wetting phase clusters, trapping of wetting and nonwetting phases by snapoff and bypassing. We also consider realistic variations in advancing and receding contact angles. There is a discussion of the effects of additional parameters such as the fraction of oil-wet pores, mean coordination number and pore size distribution upon fractionally and mixed wet capillary pressure curves. Moreover, we calculate Amott oil and water indices using the simulated curves. Results indicate that oil recovery via water imbibition in weakly water-wet cores can often exceed that obtained from strongly water-wet samples. Such an effect has been observed experimentally in the past. The basic physics governing this enhancement in spontaneous water imbibition can be explained using the concept of a capillarity surface. Based on these theoretical calculations, we propose a general "regime based" theory of wettability classification and analysis. We classify a range of experimentally observed and apparently inconsistent waterflood recovery trends into various regimes, depending upon the structure of the underlying oil- and water-wet pore clusters and the distribution of contact angles. Using this approach, numerous published experimental Amott indices and waterflood data from a variety of core/crude oil/brine systems are analyzed. Introduction In crude oil/brine/rock (COBR) systems, pore level displacements of oil and brine and hence the corresponding petrophysical flow parameters (e.g., Pc and krw/kro) describing these displacements are governed by the pore geometry, topology and wettability of the system. A number of excellent review papers are available that describe experimental investigations of the effect of wettability on capillary pressure and oil-water relative permeability curves.1–5 In COBR systems, wettability alterations depend upon the mineralogical composition of the rock, pH and/or composition of the brine, crude oil composition, initial water saturation, reservoir temperature, etc.6–12 Therefore, in recent years, interest in restoring the wettability of reservoir core using crude oil and formation brine has greatly increased.3,4,13,14 In this approach, cleaned reservoir core is first saturated with brine and then oil flooded to initial water saturation using crude oil. The core containing crude oil and brine is then aged to alter its wettability state. Wettability measurements, such as Amott and USBM tests, and waterflood experiments are then typically conducted on the aged core. This entire process broadly mimics the actual flow sequences in the reservoir; consequently, the wettability alterations are more realistic than those achieved using chemical treatment methods. During the aging process, wettability may be altered to vastly different degrees depending upon many factors, including those mentioned above. In addition, aging time, thickness of existing water films and wetting film disjoining pressure isotherms also play important roles. Hence, the final wettability state of a re-conditioned core will generally be case specific.

Role of molecular diffusion in the recovery of water flood residual oil

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chem Int
Keyword(s):  
Oil Recovery ◽  
Water Saturation ◽  
Fractured Reservoirs ◽  
Naturally Fractured Reservoirs ◽  
Gravity Drainage ◽  
Co2 Injection ◽  
Initial Water ◽  
Water Imbibition ◽  
Naturally Fractured ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Co2

Traditionally, carbon dioxide (CO2) injection has been considered an inefficient method for enhancing oil recovery from naturally fractured reservoirs. Obviously, it would be useful to experimentally investigate the efficiency of waterflooding naturally fractured reservoirs followed by carbon dioxide (CO2) injection. This issue was investigated by performing water imbibition followed by CO2 gravity drainage experiments on artificially fractured cores at reservoir conditions. The experiments were designed to illustrate the actual process of waterflooding and CO2 gravity drainage in a naturally fractured reservoir in the Brass Area, Bayelsa. The results demonstrate that CO2 gravity drainage could significantly increase oil recovery after a waterflood. During the experiments, the effects of different parameters such as permeability, initial water saturation and injection scheme was also examined. It was found that the efficiency of the CO2 gravity drainage decrease as the rock permeability decreases and the initial water saturation increases. Cyclic CO2 injection helped to improve oil recovery during the CO2 gravity drainage process which alters the water imbibition. Oil samples produced in the experiment were analyzed using gas chromatography to determine the mechanism of CO2-improved oil production from tight matrix blocks. The results show that lighter components are extracted and produced early in the test. The results of these experiments validate the premises that CO2 could be used to recover oil from a tight and unconfined matrix efficiently.

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