Abstract
The change in contact angles due to the injection of low salinity water or any other wettability altering agent in an oil-rich porous medium is modeled by a network model of disordered pores transporting two immiscible fluids. We introduce a dynamic wettability altering mechanism, where the time dependent wetting property of each pore is determined by the cumulative flow of water through it. Simulations are performed to reach steady-state for different possible alterations in the wetting angle (θ). We find that deviation from oil-wet conditions re-mobilizes the stuck clusters and increases the oil fractional flow. However, the rate of increase in the fractional flow depends strongly on θ and as θ → 90◦ , a critical angle, the system shows critical slowing down which is characterized by two dynamic critical exponents.
Highlights
The world’s primary energy demand is predicted to increase by one-third between 2011 and 2035, where 82% of it comes from fossil fuels [1]
We present a detailed study of wettability alterations in two-phase flow considering a network model of disordered pores transporting two immiscible fluids where a dynamic wettability alteration mechanism, correlated with the flow-pathways, is implemented
In this article we have presented a detailed computational study of wettability alterations in two-phase flow in porous media, where the change in the wetting angle in a pore is controlled by the volumetric flow of the altering agent through it
Summary
The world’s primary energy demand is predicted to increase by one-third between 2011 and 2035, where 82% of it comes from fossil fuels [1]. We present a detailed study of wettability alterations in two-phase flow considering a network model of disordered pores transporting two immiscible fluids where a dynamic wettability alteration mechanism, correlated with the flow-pathways, is implemented. We did not consider film-flow in the present study This is because wettability alteration techniques are important for reservoirs with low oil-saturation and when oil-saturation drops, the continuous oil films [9, 10] in a oil-wet network are expected to become discontinuous leaving immobile oil clusters stuck due to capillary forces. Once the system reaches the steady-state in a oil-wet network, the dynamic wettability alterations are implemented, which may be considered as the tertiary recovery stage or EOR.
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