A novel Shan and Chen type Lattice Boltzmann two phase method to study the capillary pressure curves of an oil water pair in a porous media

Abstract

Abstract In this study, an immiscible oil-water two phase flow in a typical porous media was modeled using the well-known Lattice Boltzmann method. A set of flow tests for modeling an oil-water two phase flow in the porous media were conducted to generate the capillary pressure curves for two distinctive initial conditions, namely, water and oil dispersed conditions in two domains of different resolutions. Based on the obtained results, the general trend of these curves has an acceptable agreement with the usual trend of these curves in hydrocarbon reservoirs and the capillary data are independent of the initial conditions. Also, the results showed the effect of grid resolution on capillary data which are validated quantitatively by proposing a new approach using Purcell's equation. One can see that they are compatible with the geometrical characteristics of the porous media as well as the conditions governing the tests. Finally, another set of tests for oil water pairs of higher viscosity ratio up to 4.4 was performed in a low porosity heterogeneous porous media and the viscous coupling effect on capillary data, due to viscosity ratio, was studied to strengthen the model validation.