A novel method for simultaneous determination of relative permeability and capillary pressure from corefloods (gas/CO2–water systems)
Nassim Hemmati A * , Sara Borazjani A , Alexander Badalyan A , Luis Genolet B , Aron Behr B , Abbas Zeinijahromi A and Pavel Bedrikovetsky AA University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia.
B Wintershall Dea GmbH, Kassel, Germany.
The APPEA Journal 63 S183-S187 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ22019
Accepted: 6 March 2023 Published: 11 May 2023
© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of APPEA.
Abstract
Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) using CO2 injection is being investigated as a feasible technique for oil reservoirs. The ability of a reservoir to store CO2 for a long time presents an opportunity to create sustainable solutions to the problems posed by the continued use of fossil fuels and climate change, and to support the commitment to regional, national, and global agreements to reduce CO2 emissions. Injection strategies such as water-alternate-gas (WAG) or carbonised water injection (CWI) have been proposed to overcome the issue of low sweep efficiency of CO2 flood in the reservoir. An understanding of the relative permeability and capillary pressure behaviour is necessary to simulate these processes in porous media. The steady-state coreflood test is a widely accepted industrial method to determine relative permeability (Kr), but the capillary pressure (Pc) must be found from other sources (porous plate, mercury injection, and centrifuge tests). A significant difference between the capillary pressure determined from corefloods and by other methods is widely presented in the literature. This work presents a novel coreflood method for the simultaneous determination of relative permeability (Kr) and capillary pressure (Pc). The main idea is to use the stabilised data of the steady-state method along with the transient data of the pressure drop. Therefore, in the proposed steady-state-transient test (SSTT), the transient pressure drop data across the core, between the sequential steady-states, are used instead of the traditionally utilised Pc-curve.
Keywords: capillary pressure, coreflood, inverse solution, low-salinity, porous media, relative permeability, steady-state-transient test, two-phase flow.
Nassim Hemmati is currently a PhD candidate in Petroleum Engineering at the Australian School of Petroleum and Energy Resources, University of Adelaide. She completed her BSc and MSc studies in Petroleum Engineering at Sharif University of Technology (Tehran, Iran) in 2012 and 2015, respectively. Her research interests include enhanced oil recovery (EOR), formation damage in the petroleum industry, fluid flow in porous media, and low-salinity waterflooding. |
Dr Sara Borazjani graduated from the University of Adelaide with a PhD in Petroleum Engineering in February 2016. She has since worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the university’s Australian School of Petroleum. She is now an ARC Grant-Funded researcher at the Australian School of Petroleum and Energy Resources. Her research interests include mathematical modelling of multi-phase, multicomponent flow in porous media, enhanced oil recovery methods, and fines-assisted waterflooding for improved oil production. |
Dr Alexander Badalyan is currently a Research Fellow at Australian School of Petroleum and Energy Resources, University of Adelaide. He holds a BEng in Automatic Control from Grozny State Oil Technical University (Grozny, Russian Federation/USSR) and a PhD in Theoretical Fundamentals of Heat Engineering from Azerbaijan State Oil Academy (Baku, Azerbaijan/USSR). His research interests cover suspension flow in porous media, characterisation of porous solids by manometric gas adsorption, thermophysical properties of fluids, application of supercritical and liquid carbon dioxide for extraction of essential oils, dissolved gas-in-oil analysis of power transformers, online monitoring of residual disinfectant concentration in drinking water, and development of computer-based systems for real-time process monitoring and control. |
Dr Luis Genolet is a Senior Chemical Engineer at Wintershall (Germany). He was awarded his PhD in Chemical Engineering. He was a Chief Scientist at Intevep Research (Venezuela). |
Dr Aron Behr is a Senior Petroleum Engineer at Wintershall (Germany). He was awarded his PhD in Fluid Mechanics from Moscow Gubkin Oil-Gas University. Previously, he was a Professor at Ukhta University (Russia) and a Senior Scientist at Freiberg University (Germany). |
Dr Abbas Zeinijahromi is Chevron Associate Professor in Carbon Storage Engineering at the Australian School of Petroleum and Energy Resources (ASPER). His expertise is subsurface engineering with a focus on reactive multi-phase flow in porous media. He is working with the Formation Damage & EOR Research Group and performing research on ‘mathematical and laboratory modelling of multi-phase flow in porous media’ with application in ‘CO2 storage (CCUS)’, ‘low salinity waterflooding’, ‘formation damage’, and ‘EOR’. |
Pavel Bedrikovetsky is Professor of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Adelaide. He has authored a seminal book on reservoir engineering and 290 papers in international journals and SPE. His research covers CO2 and hydrogen storage, well injectivity and productivity, formation damage, and EOR. He holds MSc in Applied Mathematics, PhD in Fluid Mechanics, and DSc in Reservoir Engineering, all from Moscow Gubkin Oil-Gas University. Pavel boasts 40-year industrial experience in Europe, USA, Brazil, Ukraine, Russia, and Australia. Pavel is 2008–2009 and 2016–2017 SPE Distinguished Lecturer worldwide. He is SPE Distinguished member worldwide. Pavel was ranked among the world’s top 2% scientists by Stanford University (2020). |
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