Abstract
Abstract The two-century old Young's equation has been widely used in petroleum engineering to depict wettability through contact angles and surface free energies. In order to address it's inadequacies, including the unaccounted vertical component of liquid-vapor interfacial tension and to accommodate the imbalance of intermolecular forces experienced by the three-phase confluence zone, the Young's equation has been modified in the recent literature to include a line tension term in case of solid-liquid-vapor (S-L-V) systems. In this paper, we would like to report on the results of our attempts to experimentally investigate the applicability of the line tension-based modification of the Young's equation to solid-liquid-liquid (rock-oil-brine) systems of interest to the petroleum industry. Both the ambient and reservoir condition optical cells have been used, with stock tank oil and live oil respectively, to determine the drop size dependency of dynamic contact angle subtended by the oil-brine interface against the rock surface. The experimental data have been correlated with the modified Young's equation to determine the magnitude of line tension in rock-oil-brine systems. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to apply the modified Young's equation to rock-oil-brine systems and to measure line tension for a rock-live crude oil-brine system at reservoir conditions of pressure and temperature. The measured line tension for solid-liquid-liquid (S-L-L) systems, while being positive and of the same order of magnitude as in solid-liquid-vapor (S-L-V) systems, correlates well with the water-advancing contact angle and the adhesion number, a ratio of adhesion force to capillary force. This experimental study indicates that the extent of deviation from the Young's equation exhibited by rock-oil-brine systems may be directly related to the adhesion phenomenon. This study reinforces the need to include the rock-oil adhesion forces in our consideration of rock-fluid interactions, wettability and their impact on improved oil recovery processes.
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