An Experimental Investigation of Three-phase Flow Through Water-wet Rocks

Abstract

Petroleum production often involves simultaneous flow of three immiscible fluids through porous rock formations. The objective of this work is to experimentally measure two and three phase relative permeabilities and to evaluate the existing relative permeability prediction models. We used typical Berea sandstone with refined mineral oil, distilled water and nitrogen gas. The measurements were carried out at temperature of 23°C and pressure of 800 psi. Two and three phase relative permeability measurements were obtained using the steady state technique. The three-phase experiments are conducted in the imbibition mode. The flow rates of brine and gas were increased gradually and the oil rate was decreased to simulate the reservoir behavior during primary oil production. Several different flow rate ratios were selected to cover a wide range of saturations on the ternary diagram. The three-phase experimental results were compared with the prediction from two relative permeability prediction models. Finally the limitations of the methods were discussed. The analysis has shown that Blunt’s model can be a better choice to predict the three phase permeabilities.