Abstract
The penetration of water during water flooding has been observed over many years using several methods. A microfocused X-ray computed tomography scanner can be used to directly observe 3D water flooding in a nondestructive manner. To eliminate the possibility of false images being produced because of X-ray broadening effects, we developed a visualization method by arranging the brightness distribution of all phases involved. Water flooding experiments were conducted using oil-wet and water-wet porous media. The water phase was injected upward into packed glass beads containing an oil phase, and the process was scanned every minute until steady state was reached. Using this scheme, real-time, the water invasion pattern and oil trapping process in clusters of pores and individual pores can be observed clearly. By eliminating false images, the boundary of each phase could be identified with high precision, even in a single pore. Porelevel phenomena, including snap off (which has never before been captured in a real 3D porous medium), piston-like displacement, and the curvature of the interface, were also observed. Direct measurement of the pore throat radius and the contact angle between the wetting and nonwetting phases gave an approximation of the capillary pressure during the piston-like displacement and snap-off processes.
Highlights
Water flooding is one of the most important processes in oil production
The commercial software embedded with the X-ray machine reconstructed the most probable image in spaced grid size that consist of 512 images showing cross sectional view along the porous medium
Two types of displacement processes commonly occur when one fluid is displaced by another immiscible fluid in a porous medium
Summary
Water flooding is one of the most important processes in oil production. Water is injected into an oil reservoir toHow to cite this paper: Setiawan, A., et al (2014) Three-Dimensional Imaging of Pore-Scale Water Flooding Phenomena in Water-Wet and Oil-Wet Porous Media. Water flooding is one of the most important processes in oil production. During this process, some oil is left behind by the water and becomes trapped in the porous reservoir medium. The stability of the displacement front of the water is highly affected by variations in the pore channel diameters, which cause capillary pressure differences and capillary fingering, reducing the sweeping efficiency. Less than 50% of the original oil in a reservoir can be recovered using water flooding, with the rest becoming trapped because of the capillary pressure holding it in the pore spaces. Understanding the phenomena inside the reservoir rock by direct observations is a crucial step toward developing an advanced water flooding method that will significantly improve the oil recovery factor
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