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Capillary pressure – saturation relationships for gas shales measured using a water activity meter

Journal Article · · Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering
 [1];  [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7]
  1. Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States). Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences
  2. Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC), Knoxville, TN (United States). Division of Geology
  3. Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States). Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education; Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Chemical Sciences Division
  4. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Chemical Sciences Division
  5. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Energy and Transportation Science Division
  6. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Reactor and Nuclear Systems Division
  7. Univ. of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations
Hydraulic fracturing of gas shale formations involves pumping a large volume of fracking fluid into a hydrocarbon reservoir to fracture the rock and thus increase its permeability. The majority of the fracking fluid introduced is never recovered and the fate of this lost fluid, often called “leak off,” has become the source of much debate. Information on the capillary pressure – saturation relationship for each wetting phase is needed to simulate leak off using numerical reservoir models. The petroleum industry commonly employs air – water capillary pressure – saturation curves to predict these relationships for mixed wet reservoirs. Traditional methods of measuring this curve are unsuitable for gas shales due to high capillary pressures associated with the small pores present. Still, a possible alternative method is the water activity meter which is used widely in the soil sciences for such measurements. However, its application to lithified material has been limited. Here, this study utilized a water activity meter to measure air – water capillary pressures (ranging from 1.3 to 219.6 MPa) at several water saturation levels in both the wetting and drying directions. Water contents were measured gravimetrically. Seven types of gas producing shale with different porosities (2.5–13.6%) and total organic carbon contents (0.4–13.5%) were investigated. Nonlinear regression was used to fit the resulting capillary pressure – water saturation data pairs for each shale type to the Brooks and Corey equation. Data for six of the seven shale types investigated were successfully fitted (median R2 = 0.93), indicating this may be a viable method for parameterizing capillary pressure – saturation relationships for inclusion in numerical reservoir models. As expected, the different shale types had statistically different Brooks and Corey parameters. However, there were no significant differences between the Brooks and Corey parameters for the wetting and drying measurements, suggesting that hysteresis may not need to be taken into account in leak off simulations.
Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1325468
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1406137
Journal Information:
Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering, Journal Name: Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering Journal Issue: C Vol. 33; ISSN 1875-5100
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (1)

Simplified Green‐Ampt Model, Imbibition‐Based Estimates of Permeability, and Implications for Leak‐off in Hydraulic Fracturing journal April 2020

Figures / Tables (9)

Fig. 1(p. 2)figure Fig. 1
Fig. 2(p. 4)figure Fig. 2
Fig. 3(p. 6)figure Fig. 3
Table 1(p. 6)table Table 1
Fig. 4(p. 7)figure Fig. 4
Table 2(p. 8)table Table 2
Fig. 5(p. 9)figure Fig. 5
Fig. 6(p. 9)figure Fig. 6
Table 3(p. 9)table Table 3

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Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Brooks and Corey
Capillary pressure
Porosity
Shale
Volumetric water content
Water activity meter