HIGH RESOLUTION PREDICTION OF GAS INJECTION PROCESS PERFORMANCE FOR HETEROGENEOUS RESERVOIRS
This report outlines progress in the first quarter of the extension of the DOE project ''High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs''. This report presents experimental results that demonstrate combined scaling effects of viscous, capillary, and gravity crossflow mechanisms that apply to the situations in which streamline models are used. We designed and ran a series of experiments to investigate combined effects of capillary, viscous, and gravity forces on displacement efficiency in layered systems. Analog liquids (isooctane, isopropanol, and water) were employed to control scaling parameters by changing interfacial tension (IFT), flow rate, and density difference. The porous medium was a two-dimensional (2-D) 2-layered glass bead model with a permeability ratio of about 1:4. In order to analyze the combined effect of only capillary and viscous forces, gravity effects were eliminated by changing the orientation of the glass bead model. We employed a commercial simulator, Eclipse100 to calculate displacement behavior for comparison with the experimental data. Experimental results with minimized gravity effects show that the IFT and flow rate determine how capillary and viscous forces affect behavior of displacement. The limiting behavior for scaling groups for two-phase displacement was verified by experimental results. Analysis of the 2-D images indicates that displacements having a capillary-viscous equilibrium give the best sweep efficiency. Experimental results with gravity effects, but with low IFT fluid systems show that slow displacements produce larger area affected by crossflow. This, in turn, enhances sweep efficiency. The simulation results represent the experimental data well, except for the situations where capillary forces dominate the displacement.
- Research Organization:
- Stanford University (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FC26-00BC15319
- OSTI ID:
- 823232
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 30 Sep 2003
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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