ELSEVIER Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 14 (1996) 197-208

PETROLEUM
SCIENCE &
ENGINEERING
Temperature effect on heavy-oil recovery by imbibition in
fractured reservoirs
Tayfun Babadagli
I.rtmhul Technical University, Department of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering. 80626 Maslak. Ittunhul, Turke?
Received 12 May 1995; accepted I August 1995
Abstract
In this study, the effects of temperature on the efficiency of capillary imbibition mechanism were investigated. For this
purpose, 3-D capillary imbibition tests under static conditions and at different temperatures (between 20 and 90C) were
conducted using Berea Sandstone samples taken from the same block. In each set of experiments, different types of fluid
pairs representing a wide range of oil/water viscosity ratios and interfacial tensions (IFT) were used. Reduction in viscosity
and IFT due to temperature increase remarkably altered the capillary imbibition rate. Residual oil saturation was more
significantly influenced by the IFT reduction than thermal expansion effect. Also, a study was conducted to investigate the
validity of the scaling law when the temperature effect is involved.
1. Introduction
Enhanced oil recovery processes are mostly aimed
to recover matrix oil that has not been produced by
primary production in heavy-oil-containing naturally
fractured reservoirs (NFR). During water injection,
the matrix recovery is achieved by capillary imbibi-
tion transfer (also called spontaneous or free imbibi-
tion) between matrix and fracture if the matrix is
water-wet.
The effects of many critical parameters on the
capillary imbibition mechanism have been investi-
gated in the past. Under static conditions, i.e., no
flow in fracture, matrix properties such as permeabil-
ity (Mattax and Kyte, 19621, size (Mattax and Kyte,
1962; Iffly et al., 1972; Torsaeter, 19841, wettability
(Babadagli, 1992), heterogeneity (Parsons and
Chaney, 1966; Torsaeter, 1984; Hamon and Vidal,
19881, boundary conditions (Iffly et al., 1972; Ha-
mon and Vidal, 1988; Bourbiaux and Kalaydjian,
1988) and fluid properties such as density and chem-
ical composition of water (Iffly et al., 1972). interfa-
cial tension (Cuiec et al., 1990; Keijzer and De
Vries, 1990; Schechter et al., 1991) and viscosity
ratio (Blair, 1964; Ghedan and Poetmann, 1990)
were found as critical parameters influencing the
capillary imbibition transfer performance. If there is
a continuous flow in fracture (dynamic conditions),
water velocity in the fracture (Graham and Richard-
son, 1959; Mannon and Chilingar, 1973; Babadagli
and Ershaghi, 19921, the fracture aperture and orien-
tation (Babadagli, 1992) and density (Babadagli.
1994) are the additional parameters controlling the
matrix fracture capillary imbibition transfer.
It is obvious that the capillary imbibition transfer
is strongly influenced by the viscosity of matrix oil.
Increasing matrix oil viscosity substantially de-
creases the capillary imbibition rate as numerically
0920.4105/96/.415.00 0 1996 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
SSDI 0920-4 IO5(95)00049-6
198 T. Bahadagli / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 14 119%) 197-208
shown by Briggs et al. (1988). If the matrix contains
heavy-oil, the only way to increase the efficiency of
the capillary imbibition is to reduce the matrix oil
viscosity. Introducing the heat into the reservoir by
injecting steam or hot water is the most efficient way
to accomplish this. No detailed experimental study
dealing with the oil viscosity effects on the capillary
imbibition mechanism in NFRs has been reported in
literature yet. Blair (1964) numerically modeled 2-D
and radial imbibition and concluded that the imbibi-
tion recovery time is linearly proportional to the
square root of oil viscosity on a log-log scale when
the oil viscosity is higher than the viscosity of water.
Briggs et al. (1992) performed two capillary imbibi-
tion experiments under high pressure (7.50 psi) and
temperatures (302 and 482F) and they distin-
guished the contribution of thermal expansion, capil-
lary imbibition, depletion, waterflooding and steam-
flooding on the recovery. They stated that two exper-
iments are not enough to reach a firm conclusion in
identifying the recovery mechanisms under high
pressure and temperature. On the other hand, Zhou et
al. (1993) conducted static imbibition experiments at
room temperature on samples saturated and aged
with crude oil at high temperatures. Jensen and
Sharma (1991) performed steamflood and hot water
injection experiments on fractured samples. They
evaluated the recovery performances in terms of the
fracture properties, the temperature of injected fluid
and the lithology of matrix structure.
Recovery mechanisms in NFRs under thermal
applications differ from that in homogeneous reser-
voirs because of the structural differences in the
medium. Reis (1990) reviewed the recovery mecha-
nisms encountered during steam injection into a NFR
and stated that important mechanisms include ther-
mal expansion of oil, capillary imbibition and pres-
sure depletion. Mechanisms like gravity drainage,
distillation and solution gas drive were observed as
minor contributors to oil recovery. Among the domi-
nant mechanisms, capillary imbibition also occurs
under isothermal conditions and capillary imbibition
efficiency substantially decreases by increasing oil
viscosity. During the heat injection, thermal expan-
sion of matrix oil also takes place while steam
condensate is imbibed by matrix spontaneously. In-
jected heat affects not only the viscosity of oil but
also several other parameters such as interfacial ten-
sion between oil and water, the viscosity of water
and rock properties.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the
temperature effects on the efficiency of the capillary
imbibition mechanism if the matrix contains heavy-
oil. Specific attention was given to the effect of
change in oil viscosity and IFT due to increase in
temperature. The application temperatures were kept
below 100C to avoid steam generation.
On the other hand, scaling the laboratory experi-
ments to reservoir conditions is an important aspect
of capillary imbibition studies. The basic condition
for the scaling equation to be valid is that the relative
permeability and capillary pressure functions must
be the same for reservoirs and matrix blocks (Mattax
and Kyte. 1962). It is the fact that these curves may
change if the temperature effect is involved. Because
of this, the prediction of reservoir scale processes has
proved to be difficult (Briggs et al., 1992). This has
been the motivation to perform a scaling analysis in
this study.
2. Experimental study
2. I. Rock samples
The rock sample used in all experiments is un-
fired Berea Sandstone. Cylindrical plugs, 2.5 cm in
diameter and 7.5 cm in length, were taken from a
6 X 6 X 6 homogeneous block. Permeability of
the samples to brine was determined to be 400 mD
and the porosity ranges between 19 and 21%. After
cutting the samples, they were saturated with the oil
phase without prewetting the medium with water
phase.
2.2. Fluids
Five different types of oil (kerosene, engine oil,
mineral oil type 1 and type 2, and crude-oil) and
brine solution were used in the experiments. The oil
viscosities range between 2.19 and 238 CP at room
temperature. Brine is 3 wt% NaCl solution and its
viscosity is 1 cP. For low interfacial tension (IFT)
experiments, the aqueous phase was prepared by
adding 1 or 2% surfactant into the brine solution. For
both oleic and aqueous phases, viscosities and inter-
T. Bahadagli/Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 14 (19961 197-208
199
facial tensions were measured at temperatures below
100C. The viscosity and IFT changes with tempera-
ture for the oil samples are presented in Figs. 1 and
2. respectively. Also, the volumetric expansion due
to increase in temperature is shown in Fig. 3 for the
same oil samples.
2.3. Pmcedwe
After saturating the samples with 100% oil phase,
they were immersed into a graduated tube filled with
brine solution. Thus, the sample was exposed to
capillary imbibition transfer from all directions. The
oil saturated samples were subjected to the same
aging time. The higher temperature experiments were
conducted in an oven. For those experiments, the
temperature of the oven was fixed and the brine
solution was preheated to that temperature. Then, the
sample was immersed into the graduated tube filled
with preheated water.
2sow ,
I
1 :, I
000
, I , I , I , I
0 00 20 00 40 00 6OW 8000 10000
Temperature, C
0
I I I I I I I I I
0 10 20 30 to 50 60 70 80 90 100
Temperature, @C
Fig. I. Viscosity change with temperature for the oil samples used
in the experiments.
1
o--
20 30 40 50 60 i-0 80
TemperaturqC
Fig. 2. Interfacial tension change with temperature for the oil
samples used in the experiments.
Experiments were carried out at temperatures be-
low the boiling point of water and at atmospheric
pressure. Thus, the effects of mechanisms requiring
higher temperature such as steam distillation, gas
generation, drainage and the change of the rock
properties were avoided. Only, capillary imbibition
and thermal expansion of oil are the effective recov-
ery mechanisms in this temperature range (20-
90C). During the experiments, recovery by capillary
imbibition was recorded against time. Each sample
was used only for one experiment to prevent possible
wettability alteration due to the cleaning process.
Because all the samples were taken from the same
block, which was apparently homogeneous, the sam-
ple properties that might affect the capillary imbibi-
tion performance, such as permeability, wettability
and heterogeneity were presumed identical.
3. Experimental results and analysis
The first experiment was conducted with
kerosene-brine fluid pair for testing the experimen-
200 T. Babadagli/Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 14 (1996) 197-208
20 30 40 T.e 60 70 80
Fig. 3. Thermal expansion values for the oil samples used in the
experiments.
tal equipment and procedure. The kerosene to brine
viscosity ratio is 2.19 and because of the low viscos-
ity ratio and also strong water wettability of the
sample, a quick imbibition recovery was observed in
the experiments at different temperatures as seen in
Fig. 4. The imbibition rate is slightly higher in the
case of the higher temperature experiment initially,
but the increase in temperature from 20 to 75C did
not affect the ultimate recovery and the time to
complete the capillary imbibition. This can be ex-
plained by insignificant change in the viscosity and
interfacial tension (IFT) of kerosene with tempera-
ture (Figs. 1 and 2).
The effect of temperature on the capillary imbibi-
tion performance was observed as more significant
for the higher oil/water viscosity ratios. Fig. 5
illustrates the capillary imbibition recovery against
time for the crude-oil experiments conducted at three
temperature values. During the early period (first 30
min), there is a difference in the imbibition rates
between room temperature (25C) and high-tempera-
ture experiments (35 and 50C). This was attributed
to the thermal expansion of oil. No effect of tempera-
ture on the viscosity of oil was seen during the
intermediate period (between 30 and 60 min) yet and
the similar recovery behavior was followed for the
three experiments. Then, during the late period (after
60 mitt), there is an obvious increase in capillary
imbibition rate for the high-temperature experiments.
This implies that the effect of temperature has started
to be felt on the viscosity of oil. Finally, the recovery
Fig. 4. Imbibition recovery curves at different temperatures for kerosene-brine system
T. Bahada~li/Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 14 (19961 197-208
50-
40-
P
8
0
$ 30-
f
s
d
20 -
10 -
1 10 100 l ow
Time. minutes
201
Fig. 5. Imbibition recovery curves at different temperatures for crude oil-brine system.
by capillary imbibition was completed in the same
time period for three experiments. Process times are
close to each other but the ultimate recovery is
significantly raised due to temperature increase.
Processed oil samples were used in the other
group of experiments. Results for mineral oil 1
(MO1 > and mineral oil 2 (M02) are presented in
Figs. 6 and 7, respectively. Increasing temperature
accelerated the capillary imbibition rate due to the
reduction in oil viscosity in all cases. Also, lower
residual oil saturation values were obtained in high-
temperature experiments. In those experiments, the
differences among the curves in early times were
also attributed to the thermal expansion. As opposed
to the crude oil-brine experiments, the effect of the
temperature on the capillary imbibition rate can be
seen at every stage of the experiments (Figs. 6 and
7).
Fig. 6. Imbibition recovery curves at different for mineral oil- I -brine system
202 T. Babadagli/ J ournal of Peiroleum Science and Engineering 14 (19%) 197-208
A recovery curve is basically characterized by attributed to the change in IFT due to increase in
two features: the end point representing the ultimate temperature. The effect of the IFT on capillary imbi-
recovery and the shape of the curve representing the bition mechanism was examined in several studies
rate of the recovery. Both features were altered by (Cuiec et al., 1990; Keijzer and De Vries, 1990;
temperature as observed in the experiments (Figs. Schechter et al., 1991) and different conclusions
4-7). The differences in the curves are mainly due to were reached. According to Mattax and Kytes scal-
(1) thermal expansion of oil, and (2) change in the ing law, the recovery time linearly decreases by
oil viscosity. increasing IFT:
The thermal expansion becomes effective in the
beginning of the process as implied by the recovery
curves. This is in accordance with the Reis (1990)
recovery time calculations for different mechanisms
during steam injection into naturally fractured reser-
voirs. He reported that, in reservoir conditions, re-
covery by thermal expansion of matrix oil could
occur in the order of weeks, whereas, oil expulsion
by capillary imbibition could take place in the order
of years.
The change in the capillary imbibition rate is
apparently due to reduction in oil viscosity but, it
was observed that the thermal expansion is not the
only mechanism increasing ultimate recovery. As an
example, the highest volume expansion at the highest
temperature value reached during the experiments
(80C) belongs to MO2 and it is 7% (Fig. 3). But,
the difference in ultimate recovery between two MO2
experiments conducted at room temperature (27.X)
and 80C is 19% (Fig. 7). The 12% difference was
Cuiec et al. (1990) observed that lowering IFT re-
duced the capillary imbibition recovery rate in accor-
dance with the scaling law given in Eq. 1. Schechter
et al. (1991) reported that the recovery rate was
influenced by decreasing IFT. They also observed
that the ultimate recovery increases by decreasing
IFT. On the other hand, Keijzer and De Vries (1990)
stated that, for the surfactant system they studied,
lowering IFT affected the imbibition rate and no
effect was observed on the ultimate recovery.
In order to clarify the reasons for the changes in
ultimate recovery, low IFT experiments were also
performed in this study. Low IFT solutions were
prepared by adding 1 and 2% surfactant to the brine.
Capillary imbibition experiments were then con-
ducted at room temperature using surfactant solution
A-_---
-n
0. 1 10 100 100. 0
Time. minutes
Fig. 7. Imbibition recovery curves at different temperatures for mineral oil-2-brine system
T. Babadagli/J oumal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 14 (19961 197-208 203
100
Time, minutes
Fig. 8. lmhibition recovery curves for mineral oil-2-surfactant system CT =28C)
as the aqueous phase. The results are given in Figs. 8
and 9 for M02-surfactant and engine oil (EO)-
surfactant fluid pairs, respectively. For both fluid
pairs, the imbibition rate is higher for the low IFT
cases in first 10 min. But later, the imbibition rate
becomes higher for the high IFT case in accordance
with the theory. Finally, in all experiments, the
ultimate recovery increases with decreasing IFT as
consistent with the previous studies (Cuiec et al.,
1990; Schechter et al., 1991). This explains the
reason for the increase in the ultimate recoveries by
increasing temperature.
The change in the imbibition rate with IFT was
observed also by Schechter et al. (1991) as similar to
this study. In their cases, the capillary imbibition rate
increased or decreased by decreasing IFT. They at-
tributed this to the relative contribution of capillary
and gravity forces that are both effective, because the
0
1 10 153
Time, minutes
Fig. 9. Imbibition recovery curves for engine oil-surfactant system (T = 28C).
204 T. Babadagli/ Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 14 (19961 107-208
sample length they used is large enough to consider
the gravity effect in contrast to our study. It is
difficult to reach a firm conclusion about the effect
of IFT on the recovery rate from the experiments
performed in this study. But, it can be stated that the
residual oil saturation decreases by decreasing IFT
systematically.
3.1. Scaling
Mattax and Kyte (1962) first proposed a relation-
ship to scale the laboratory capillary imbibition ex-
periments to reservoir conditions (Eq. 1). A dimen-
sionless time (7) equation can be written from this
scaling law as follows:
k o-
,r=O.O188t - -
4 t-%$
(2)
if t is recovery time in min; k is matrix permeability
in mD; 4 is porosity; u is IFT between oil and
brine as dyne/cm; L is matrix size in cm; and P,~ is
brine viscosity in cP.
One of the conditions for this equation to be valid
is that the relative permeability and capillary pres-
sure functions must be the same for scaled cases,
e.g., reservoir and laboratory matrix blocks. These
curves are expected to change under temperature
effect. This is the difficult part in the scaling process
as mentioned earlier. In this section, as a preliminary
approach, an analysis is performed to check the
validity of the correlation given in Eq. 2 for the
experiments conducted.
In the experiments, only p0 and u are subjected
to change. Therefore, instead of pL, in Eq. 2, the
viscosity of oil, pL,, was inserted (Cuiec et al.,
1990):
-
d
k (T
7= 0.0188t - -
4 G2
Because the rock properties, such as k, C#J and L are
same for all experiments, Eq. 3 can be written in the
following form:
cr
7= Ct-
(4)
PO
where C is constant and equal to 0.1319, since
k = 400 mD, 4 = 0.2 and L = 2.5 cm.
Berea Sandstone is expected to represent different
wettabilities for the oil types used in the experi-
ments. Therefore, the wettability effect must be taken
into account in scaling analysis. Eq. 4 can be rewrit-
ten to include the wettability factor as follows:
r= Ct
aces(8)
(5)
E*o
where 0 is the contact angle. Because of the difficul-
ties in the measurement of the contact angle, the
capillary imbibition method was chosen to quantify
the wettability of the rock sample for a particular
fluid pair. As suggested in the literature, if the
recovery is plotted against the square root of time, a
straight line is expected and the following expression
is valid (Indelman and Katz, 1980; Ma et al., 1994):
R(t) = $fi
(6)
p ,>I
where R is the recovery by capillary imbibition as
the percentage of original oil in place, t is the
recovery time, S,, is the initial oil saturation, V is
the pore volume and c is constant. Because V and
S,, are same for all samples in the present experi-
ments, Eq. 6 can be rewritten as follows:
R(t) =cfi
(7)
where c is the slope. Fig. 10 illustrates the fi versus
recovery plot for three different oil-brine pairs. The
7
i
0 2
1:
LnlR 6 8
Fig. 10. 4 versus recovery for three samples.
T. Bubadagli/ Joumul of Petroleum Science und Engineering 14 (19961 197-208 205
straight line for the crude oil-brine pair has a much
lower slope than the MO1 and EO curves. The only
reason for this substantial change in the slopes is the
difference in the wettabilities because the viscosity
and IFT values are very close to each other and the
rock properties are identical. To use the slopes as a
wettability indicator, Eq. 5 can be modified as fol-
lows:
where ,f(H) is a certain function of core wettability
and corresponds to the slopes of the curves in Fig.
10. In the scaling analysis, the f( 0) was taken as
unity for MO1 -brine pair (it represents the highest
cos (0) or water wettability) and 0.125 for crude
oil-brine pair because the slope of the MOl-brine
straight line is eight times greater than that of crude
oil-brine line.
To investigate the validity of the scaling law
qualitatively, the recoverable oil was plotted first
against time (Fig. 11) and then the dimensionless
time given in Eq. 8 (Fig. 12). The wettability effect
was incorporated using the ,x0> corresponding to
each oil sample, e.g., 0.125 for crude oil-brine
curves, unity for MOl-brine curves, etc. If the
scaling law is valid, all the curves are expected to
represent the same recovery behavior against dimen-
sionless time. When the two plots (Figs. 1 I and 12)
are compared, a possible scaling behavior can be
pronounced except the two curves corresponding to
the higher temperature crude oil experiments (35
and 50C). This can be explained as follows; refer-
ring back to crude oil-brine recovery curves (Fig. 5),
although there are differences in capillary imbibition
rates in early and late times that were attributed to
the thermal expansion of oil and the change in oil
viscosity by temperature, respectively, similar imbi-
bition behaviors were observed for the three experi-
ments in intermediate times. This means that no
effect of temperature on the viscosity has been felt in
that time period yet, whereas constant values for
viscosities and IFTs at a particular temperature were
used for creating the recovery curves against dimen-
sionless time, T. Thus, assuming a constant viscosity
for higher temperature cases is not suitable for the
crude-oil experiments. This seems to be the difficult
point of the scaling study and may need more experi-
mentation.
Differences in the recoveries against the dimen-
sionless time in early times (Fig. 12) are obviously
due to thermal expansion that is not taken into
account in the scaling study. Also, notice that two
other factors, the changes in the viscosity of water
and wettability by temperature, were assumed negli-
gible and not considered in the scaling study.
01 10 100 IWO 1omo 10000 0
Time, minutes
Fig. I I. Time versus recoverable oil for five oil-brine fluid pairs at different temperatures.
206 T. Babadagli/J ournal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 14 (1996) 197-208
000
1 I ,11111 I I I11111 I II,,!11 I I I!(,,1
001 010 1 00 1000 10000
Dimensionless time ( 7=0. 1319tf ( o) 0 / I L, )
Fig. 12. Dimensionless time vers~~s recoverable oil for five oil-brine fluid pairs at different temperatures.
3.2. Change in residual oil saturation
In the last section, the changes in residual oil
saturations are evaluated as a function of temperature
and surfactant concentrations. The results for high
temperature experiments are shown in Fig. 13. There
is a substantial decrease in residual oil saturation
(SO,) with increasing temperature and obviously there
is a critical temperature value for optimum recovery.
20 30 40 Ternpzlwe. 50 70 80
C
Fig. 13. Residual oil saturation change with temperature.
Similar graphs were also obtained for lower IFT
experiments (Fig. 14). Increasing surfactant concen-
trations (lower IFT) resulted in a decrease in S,,,.
The trend of the change in S,, by the decrease in IFT
(either by increasing surfactant concentration or tem-
perature) also leads to defining a critical IFT value
for optimum capillary imbibition performance.
55
0.0 03 0.5 0.8 1. 0 1. 3 1. 5 18 2.0
Surfadanl concentration, %
Fig. 14. Residual oil saturation change with surfactant concentra-
T. Bahadagli/ Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 14 (1996) 197-208 207
4. Conclusions v interfacial tension, dyne/cm
(1) Capillary imbibition experiments were con-
ducted on Berea Sandstone cores saturated with vis-
cous oil samples by immersing them into brine solu-
tion at different temperatures between 20 and 90C.
Then, the effects of temperature on the capillary
imbibition efficiency were analyzed.
(2) A temperature increase resulted in a decrease
in oil viscosity and interfacial tension (IFT) between
oil and brine. The reduction in oil viscosity signifi-
cantly increased the capillary imbibition rate. Influ-
ence of IFT on the capillary imbibition rate was also
observed.
i- dimensionless time
0 contact angle
Subscripts
i initial
m matrix
0 oil
W water
res reservoir
(3) Residual oil saturation (S,,) decreased with
increasing temperature. The main reasons of the
reduction in S,, are the thermal expansion of oil and
lowered IFT by heating the matrix. The effect of
lowering IFT on the ultimate recovery is more pro-
nounced than that of thermal expansion. There are
critical temperature and IFT values for optimum
recovery when the temperature of the brine is below
I 00C.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Scientific and
Technical Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK
Project No: YBAG-124) and The Research Fund of
Istanbul Technical University (Project No: 497). The
author would like to thank Ms. A. Donmez for her
assistance in laboratory work and preparing the fig-
ures.
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