Irreducible water distribution in sandstone rock: Two phase flow simulations in CT-based pore network

Abstract

A simple cutoff approach based on the capillary bundle model has become an industrial standard method to quickly obtain the irreducible water saturation from NMR T2 distribution. However this approach is not always valid. To overcome the shortcoming of the capillary bundle model that ignores pore-pore connectivity, we have conducted a two-phase flow simulation in a CT-based pore network. The CT -based pore network is a representation of a real rock pore structure that is described by a binary X-ray tomographic data set. Simulation on such network mimics a process of the porous plate measurement. The generated capillary curve is quite reasonable. The oil accession distributions at different water saturations plotted as a function of pore size provide an insight for the immiscible displacement process in the real rock pore structure. Water is trapped not only in dead ends but also in the well-connected pores due to a pore level by-pass mechanism. At the capillary end point pressure, a plot of the trapped water distribution as a function of pore size has the same lognormal distribution as the pore size distribution, which is much different from what the simple capillary bundle model suggests.