Title: Accurate early‐time and late‐time modeling of countercurrent spontaneous imbibition

Abstract

Abstract Spontaneous countercurrent imbibition into a finite porous medium is an important physical mechanism for many applications, included but not limited to irrigation, CO ₂ storage, and oil recovery. Symmetry considerations that are often valid in fractured porous media allow us to study the process in a one‐dimensional domain. In 1‐D, for incompressible fluids and homogeneous rocks, the onset of imbibition can be captured by self‐similar solutions and the imbibed volume scales with . At later times, the imbibition rate decreases and the finite size of the medium has to be taken into account. This requires numerical solutions. Here we present a new approach to approximate the whole imbibition process semianalytically. The onset is captured by a semianalytical solution. We also provide an a priori estimate of the time until which the imbibed volume scales with . This time is significantly longer than the time it takes until the imbibition front reaches the model boundary. The remainder of the imbibition process is obtained from a self‐similarity solution. We test our approach against numerical solutions that employ parametrizations relevant for oil recovery and CO ₂ sequestration. We show that this concept improves common first‐order approaches that heavily underestimate early‐time behavior andmore » note that it can be readily included into dual‐porosity models.« less

Authors:

March, Rafael ^[1]; Doster, Florian ^[1]; Geiger, Sebastian ^[1]

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. Institute of Petroleum Engineering Heriot‐Watt University Edinburgh UK

Publication Date:

Thu Aug 18 00:00:00 EDT 2016

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE

OSTI Identifier:

1402164

Grant/Contract Number:  

FE0023323

Resource Type:

Publisher's Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

Water Resources Research

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Name: Water Resources Research Journal Volume: 52 Journal Issue: 8; Journal ID: ISSN 0043-1397

Publisher:

American Geophysical Union (AGU)

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English