Experimental verification of a modified scaling group for spontaneous imbibition

Conference · Sun Dec 31 00:00:00 EST 1995

OSTI ID:199480

Zhang, X; Morrow, N R; Ma, S

Spontaneous imbibition is of critical importance to oil recovery from fractured reservoirs. A widely used approach to prediction of oil recovery involves scale-up of laboratory results to reservoir conditions. Scaling involves the effects of sample size, shape, boundary conditions, viscosity and viscosity ratios, interfacial tension, pore structure, wettability, capillary pressure and relative permeability. This work addresses the problem of scaling the combined effects of sample shape, boundary conditions, and viscosity ratios with only minor variations in other parameters. Imbibition measurements are presented for cylindrical Berea Sandstone cores of different lengths. For some experiments, core surfaces were partially sealed with epoxy to give different boundary conditions. Cores were initially saturated with refined mineral oils of different viscosities. A synthetic reservoir brine was used as the wetting phase. A characteristic length was defined as the square root of the ratio of volume to the summation of the ratios of area of core surface open to imbibition to the corresponding distance from the surface to the no-flow boundary. The characteristic length, in combination with a term that compensates for the effect of viscosity ratio, gave close correlation of all data.

• OSTI ID: 199480
• Report Number(s): CONF-951002-; TRN: 96:000706-0051
• Resource Relation: Conference: Annual meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), Dallas, TX (United States), 22-25 Oct 1995; Other Information: PBD: 1995; Related Information: Is Part Of Reservoir engineering. 1995 SPE annual technical conference and exhibition; PB: 1008 p.
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

02 PETROLEUM
FRACTURED RESERVOIRS
GEOLOGIC MODELS
SIMULATION
PETROLEUM
PRODUCTION
DRILL CORES
MATERIALS TESTING