Investigating impact of various properties on relative permeability and non-wetting phase fractional flow in brine/oil system in water-wet reservoir rock by numerical simulation

Abstract

© 2017, Society of Petroleum Engineers. In this paper, pore-scale numerical modelling predictions are performed to investigate variations in relative permeability behaviour and oil fractional flow under a range of different parameters (contact angle, capillary number and flow direction) through Brine/Oil system in Ottowa F42 Sand Pack. AVIZO (high-performance 3D image processing software) is used to separate the Micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) images of the pore spaces of rocks from grains of Ottowa F42 Sand Pack. ANSYS-CFX (high- performance CFD based simulator) is used to generate volume mesh and carry-out numerical simulation. The simulation results were analysed and compared with other experimental and numerical works. At low capillary number, the relative permeability curves were not smooth. Almost similar trends for relative permeability were observed for the imbibition process by alternate injection of oil and brine. Increase in contact angle showed less effect on fluid relative permeability and oil fractional flow. Also, alternate injection of fluids in imbibition showed a little response on fluid relative permeability and oil fractional flow. The outcomes of this investigation will be extended to intermediate-wet and oil-wet media and also for carbonate formations.