Title: Characterisation of water-oil drainage process through a reservoir rock sample by digital core analysis

Authors: Diego Casagrande; Marzio Piller; Maurizio Santini; Gianni Schena

Addresses: Dipartimento di Ingegneria, Università degli Studi di Bergamo, 24044 Viale Marconi, 5, Dalmine (BG), Italy ' Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Architettura, Università degli Studi di Trieste, 34127 via A. Valerio 6/1, Trieste (TS), Italy ' Dipartimento di Ingegneria, Università degli Studi di Bergamo, 24044 Viale Marconi, 5, Dalmine (BG), Italy ' Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Architettura, Università degli Studi di Trieste, 34127 via A. Valerio 6/1, Trieste (TS), Italy

Abstract: Oil-water relative permeability and capillary pressure of a water-wet digital core are computed using the finite-volume/volume of fluid method and mimicking traditional laboratory steady-state experiments carried out on a water saturated sample. Commercial software is used for immiscible multiphase fluid flow simulations, carried out on a low-cost multicore workstation, and the pore-scale data are upscaled to derive relative permeability and capillary pressure curves as function of water saturation. The digital sample is obtained by high resolution X-ray computed tomography scanning. [Received: March 13, 2013; Accepted: June 25, 2013]

Keywords: relative permeability; digital rock; pore-scale simulation; two-phase flow; steady-state; drainage process; water-oil systems; volume of fluid; water-oil drainage; reservoir rock; digital core analysis; capillary pressure; finite volume; multiphase fluid flow; immiscible fluid flow; water saturation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOGCT.2014.066300

International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology, 2014 Vol.8 No.4, pp.399 - 416

Received: 15 Mar 2013
Accepted: 25 Jun 2013
Published online: 23 Dec 2014 *

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