Abstract
This study describes experimental research on two-phase flow displacement using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) techniques. The overall purpose of this investigation is to determine kinetics process of phase trapping during (water-oil) two-phase flow, the front deformation and the phases saturation propagation along a vertical model. In these water flooding experiments, the porous medium model consists of packed beads of polystyrene (0.4 mm < dp < 0.6 mm) or sand grains (0.02 mm < dp < 0.50 mm). In order to conduct high accuracy experiments, a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer operating at 14 T (corresponding to a 600 MHz 1H resonance) equipped with an imaging device was used. With this equipment we can measure and visualize the two-phase flow in a vertical model of porous medium under ambient conditions. The obtained results have shown that the oil saturation profile is strongly influenced by the material properties such as the phase wetting, the sample porosity and permeability as well as the injection rate. The influence of flow velocity on the residual oil saturation was also studied. The experimental results allow an essential understanding of immiscible fluid displacement in two different types of porous medium that differ from each other mainly by the effects of wettability.
Highlights
Two-phase flow in porous media is very important and widely applicable in the petroleum industry and in the sector of chemical industry or in the hydrogeology domain
We focus on the wettability properties of the fluids with the solid surfaces as this is an important factor for secondary recovery of hydrocarbons
The centre of the field of view (FOV) for vertical sections is located at 6.7 cm above the lower filter
Summary
Two-phase flow in porous media is very important and widely applicable in the petroleum industry (such as estimation of recoverable oil reserve, optimization of the recovery techniques, etc.) and in the sector of chemical industry (catalytic reactors, separation and extraction) or in the hydrogeology domain (pollution of aquifers by NAPL). Johns and Gladden [10] have used MRI technique to visualize the dissolution of entrapped ganglia or “blobs” of octanol within the pore space of a randomly packed bed of glass beads, by a mobile aqueous phase They acquired three dimensional images and were able to distinguish the solid, hydrocarbon, and aqueous phases. In a recent work in LEMTA laboratory, MRI has been employed
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