AN APPARATUS FOR SIMULTANEOUS MEASUREMENT OF RELATIVE PERMEABILITY AND DYNAMIC CAPILLARY PRESSURE

Abstract

The simultaneous measurement of accurate relative permeability and capillary pressure data is essential for studying the phenomena of two-phase flow in porous media. Conventionally, relative permeability and capillary pressure data are measured separately using different equipment and non-identical core samples or sandpacks. It is rather difficult to maintain the same experimental conditions when measurements are made using different equipment and different porous media samples. Moreover, because relative permeability and capillary pressure can be very sensitive to common variables such as saturation and rock/fluid properties, simultaneous measurement of these properties is extremely important to achieve consistency. A relatively new experimental setup has been constructed to obtain dynamic phase pressure and saturation profiles simultaneously during two-phase flow through porous media under steady state and unsteady state conditions. These experimentally measured properties, along with the other needed data, have then been used to calculate the relative permeability and dynamic capillary pressure profiles. Based on the presented experimental results, it has been found that the new experimental setup is reliable and can reproduce stable relative permeability and dynamic capillary pressure profiles with a minimum level of uncertainty.