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Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, WY 82071, USA
StatoilHydro, Sandslihaugen 30, Sandsli, Postboks 7200, 5020 Bergen, Norway
Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of Manitoba, Manitoba, Canada, R3T 5V6
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 21 September 2009
Accepted 3 March 2010
Keywords:
spontaneous imbibition
viscosity ratio
production curve
relative permeability
counter-current imbibition
effective relative permeability
a b s t r a c t
Counter-current imbibition occurs when brine spontaneously displaces oil from a water-wet porous rock. In
experiments that attempt to simulate the production of oil from fractured reservoirs, the cumulative
production of oil is measured as a function of time. Even with wetting properties xed, usually at very strong
wetting by water, there are many variables, including the basic rock properties, the size and shape of the
core, which faces are open, and the water and oil viscosities. Experimental production versus time curves
have been correlated for many of the variables involved (Ma, S., Morrow, N.R. and Zhang, X., 1997, J. Pet. Sci.
Eng., 18, 165178). The origin of most of the terms in the correlation is theoretically understood and only the
viscosity term is essentially empirical. However, this term is signicant when relating laboratory
experiments to reservoir behaviour. Since the development of the Ma et al. correlation, data with a wider
range of viscosity ratio has been obtained by increasing the viscosity of the aqueous phase. Sequential
developments in the mathematical analysis of the effect of viscosity ratio in other correlations and their ease
of application are reviewed. A modication of the viscosity term in the Ma et al. correlation is presented that
gives close correlation of data for four orders of magnitude variation in liquid/liquid viscosity ratio and is
physically consistent with the extreme case when one phase is inviscid.
In mathematical modelling of spontaneous imbibition, it is often assumed when using the standard analysis, that
the effective relative permeabilities for each phase do not depend on viscosity ratio. Such an assumption leads to a
correlation that only ts the data for a limited range of viscosity ratios. However, the correlation of data over four
orders of magnitude variation in viscosity ratio by a function that only contains the viscosities implies that there is
a consistent dependency of effective relative permeabilities on viscosity ratio. The improved correlation is shown
to perform better than the standard analysis even with the relative permeability ratio optimized to give the
closest t to the experimental data. An assessment of how the relative permeability ratio varies with viscosity is
obtained by matching the standard mathematical model to the new empirical correlation.
2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Spontaneous imbibition occurs when surface energy conditions
cause the uid initially present in a porous medium (usually oil or air)
to be spontaneously displaced by a more-wetting uid (usually water
or brine). Counter-current imbibition can be an important mechanism
by which oil is displaced from the rock matrix (Morrow and Mason,
2001) and the function that relates the uid exchange between the
rock matrix and fractures is an important variable in modelling
displacement in fractured reservoirs (Kazemi et al., 1992; Behbahani
et al., 2006). As a rst step in unravelling the complexities that arise in
assessment of wettability from imbibition tests, much attention has
Corresponding author. Previous address: Department of Chemical Engineering,
Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, UK.
E-mail addresses: g.mason.lboro@ntlworld.com (G. Mason), HEFIS@statoil.com
(H. Fischer), morrownr@uwyo.edu (N.R. Morrow), druth@cc.umanitoba.ca (D.W. Ruth).
0920-4105/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.petrol.2010.03.017
been given to very strongly wetted media with the porous media
completely saturated by the non-wetting phase. For this combination
of wetting and initial conditions, a saturation front can sometimes be
seen as the wetting uid imbibes into the pores, showing, at least, that
most of the invasion occurs as a frontal rather than global
displacement process (Hatiboglu and Babadagli, 2010). The driving
pressure is the capillary pressure produced by curved interfaces in the
pore space. For perfect counter-current imbibition, the ow of wetting
phase in one direction exactly equals the ow of non-wetting phase in
the opposite direction.
Most counter-current imbibition studies on reservoir rocks have
been with cylindrical cores. These are typically about 75 mm in length
and about 37 mm in diameter, although a variety of other cylindrical
sizes and other shapes have been used (Mattax and Kyte, 1962; Zhang
et al., 1996; Karimaie et al., 2006; Yildiz et al., 2006; Hatiboglu and
Babadagli, 2007). In fundamental studies, the initial condition is
usually complete saturation with oil. In some experiments, especially
196
Nomenclature
a
Ai
b
c
C
F
K
krnw
krnwe
krnws
krw
krwe
krws
krw
krnw
L
Lc
m
n
Pc
P
c
Pcp
Pcp
r
rmean
Snw
Sw
Swo
t
tD
xi
Vtotal
VE
nw
w
FM
FWM
LH
LW
MFMR
MK
MMZ
RC
RMML
ZJKK
AFO
OEO
TEC
Arbitrary constant
Area open to imbibition in the ith direction (m2)
Arbitrary constant
Arbitrary constant
Arbitrary constant
Viscosity scale factor (Pa1 s1)
Permeability (m2)
Relative permeability to the non-wetting phase
Maximum relative permeability to the non-wetting
phase
Scaled relative permeability to the non-wetting phase
Relative permeability to the wetting phase
Maximum relative permeability to the wetting phase
Scaled relative permeability to the wetting phase
Average value of wetting phase relative permeability
Average value of non-wetting phase relative
permeability
Length (m)
Characteristic length (m)
Arbitrary constant
Total number of surfaces open to imbibition
Capillary pressure (Pa)
Capillary pressure at the saturation front (Pa)
Constant in capillary pressure function (Pa)
Scaling constant in capillary pressure function (Pa)
Tube radius (m)
Mean pore radius (m)
Non-wetting phase saturation
Wetting phase saturation
Wetting phase saturation at the open face
Time (s)
Dimensionless time
Distance from the open surface to the no-ow
boundary (m)
Total volume (m3)
Viscosity exponent, Standnes
Porosity
Viscosity (Pa s)
Viscosity of the non-wetting phase (Pa s)
Viscosity of the wetting phase (Pa s)
Interfacial tension (N/m)
Fischer and Morrow
Fischer, Wo and Morrow
Li and Horne
LucasWashburn
Mason, Fischer, Morrow, Ruth
Mattax and Kyte
Ma, Morrow and Zhang
Reis and Cil
Ruth, Mason, Morrow, Li
Zhou, Jia, Kamath and Kovscek
All Faces Open
One End Open
Two Ends Closed
Dimensionless time
Lucas (1918)
tD;LW =
Washburn
(1921)
Mattax and
Kyte (1962)
Reis and Cil
(1993)
r w t
s
K
tD;MK =
t
s
K 1
tD;RC = L12
2 Sw w
1
L2
Wang (1999)
Zhou, Jia,
Kamath, and
Kovscek
(2002)
Ruth, Mason,
Morrow, and
Li (2004)
s
K
1
p t
tD;MMZ = L2
c
w nw
s
K
1
p
t
tD;Wang = L2
0:25
c
0:75
w nw
s
K
t
tD;ZJKK = L12
c
2 w
nw
+ k
rnw
tD;RMML1 =
tD;RMML2
Li and Horne
(2006)
tD;LH =
1
L2c
1
s
K Pcp0 krwe Swe @
2k
k
rws
rnws
Swo
dSwAt
k
w
krnws + nw rwe krws 2Swo Sw
w krnwe
s
K
nw 1 =m m
= L12
C
1
+
C
t
1
2
c
w
w
c2 K
L2c
Pc
t
nw
+ k
k
rw
Mason, Fischer,
Morrow, and
Ruth (new)
rnw
k
rw
Ruth, Mason,
Morrow, and
Li (2004)
Standnes
(2009)
t
nw
+ k
k
rw
Ma, Morrow,
and Zhang
(1997)
Fischer, Wo,
and Morrow
(2008)
1 1
2 L2
rnw
s
K
ab
tD;FWM = L12
t
2
w + b nw
s
K
p
t
tD;Standnes = L12
1VE
c
VE
w nw
tD;MFMR =
2
L2c
s
K
w 1
p
t
nw = w
11
=
r
t
2 L2 w
tD;MK
1
= 2
L
s
K
t
1 K
1
Pc;swi
w
L2 Snw
+
k
rw
nw
krnw
t
and krnw
are the effective relative permeabilities for the
where krw
counter owing phases (both taken as 0.1) and are assumed to be
independent of viscosity. Because the change in non-wetting phase
saturation is negative, Sw rather than Snw is used to keep this value
positive. Making the approximation that
Pc =
2
rmean
rmean =
s
8K
Pc =
2K
tD;RC =
gives
where r is the tube radius and L is the tube length. In most instances,
this important relationship also holds for a large fraction of the time
during counter-current imbibition into porous media, even when
both uids are viscid. The LW equation quanties the most
signicant effect, namely that imbibition is initially very fast and
then slows dramatically.
Rapoport (1955) combined Darcy's law, a denition of capillary
pressure, and the continuity equation to develop the basic scaling
rules of two-phase ow. Mattax and Kyte (1962) (MK) extended
these rules to dene a dimensionless time for imbibition but with
restrictions on core shape and viscosity ratio, relative permeabilities,
capillary pressure characteristics, and the effect of gravity. The
correlation was tested for only a very limited number of experiments.
The MK dimensionless time is given by
197
1
L2
s
K 1
w
2 Sw 0:1
+
nw t
0:1
s
.
Vtotal
i=n
A
xi
i=1 i
where Vtotal is the total volume, Ai is the area open to imbibition in the
ith direction, xi is the distance travelled by the imbibition front from
the open surface to the no-ow boundary and n is the total number of
surfaces open to imbibition. Yildiz et al. (2006) showed that even for
large changes in the core shape and boundary conditions, the
characteristic length given by Eq. (8) works surprisingly well in
bringing the production data together on a log 10t scale.
Ma et al. (1997) also investigated variation of viscosity ratios, with
variation of the oil viscosity in particular. An empirical factor for the
dependence of imbibition on the viscosities of the two uids in the
range 1 b nw/w b 170 was determined which, was simply the square
root of the product of the viscosities. This resulted in the widely used
MMZ expression for dimensionless time:
tD;MMZ =
1
L2c
s
K
p t
w nw
198
and gas even though residual saturation to gas (5%) was seven times
lower than that for the tested oils. In all, only a limited number of
cases were tested because of the complexity of the experiments.
Li and Horne (2006) essentially applied the same approach, taking
w nw
,
and Pc, but also included
k*rw k*rnw
gravity.
single, or average, values for
tD;RMML1
1
= 2
Lc
0
s 0
K Pcp krwe Swe @
Swo
w
rnws
1
2krws krnws
dSw At
+ nwkkrwe krws 2Swo Sw
w rnwe
10
Two extreme values for this function are given as the viscosity
ratio tends to either zero or innity. The integral part of Eq. (10) is
different for these two values unless the two relative permeability
functions are symmetric, which they are not. Consequently, in any
correlation, the two relative permeability functions are involved.
Also, the factor allowing for the relevant relative permeabilities
cannot be a simple additive function of constants weighting the
effect of the two viscosities. In practice, details of the acting capillary
pressures and relative permeabilities are rarely, even if only
approximately, known. Ruth et al. (2004) gave another function
which reected the non-simple additive effects of the viscosity on
the relative permeabilities.
tD;RMML2 =
1
L2c
s
m
1
K
=
C1 1 + C2 nw m
t
w
w
11
tD;FWM =
1
L2
s
K
ab
t
w + b2 nw
12
tD;MFMR
2
= 2
Lc
s
K
p t
w 1 + nw = w
13
3. Data sets
Although there are several data sets for counter-current imbibition
in the literature, by far the most comprehensive with respect to
variation of both the oil and aqueous phase viscosities are those of
Fischer and Morrow (2006), Fischer et al. (2008), obtained for very
strongly water-wet Berea sandstone. This sandstone was of comparatively low permeability compared to most of the Berea sandstone
taken, particularly by the oil production industry, as a standard rock.
Correlations of imbibition data are largely self-consistent for the low
permeability Berea sandstone but are offset with longer dimensionless times for imbibition with respect to the main body of correlated
data (Tong et al., 2001). However, this is primarily an issue of pore
structure rather than viscosity ratio.
In Fischer and Morrow (2006), the All Faces Open core plug
geometry and oils with viscosities of 4, 22 and 43cP were tested in
conjunction with brines with added glycerol to give viscosities
ranging from 1 to 1650cP. In terms of viscosity ratio, these results
cover the range 0.01 b nw/ w b 43. In Fischer et al. (2008), using
another type of low permeability Berea sandstone, other boundary
conditions were studied, including One End Open and Two Ends
Closed with oils having viscosities of 4, 63 and 173cP and brines with
viscosities ranging from 1 to 494cP. A few additional results were
reported for All Faces Open. These later results cover the range
0.008 b nw/ w b 173. The shapes of the production curves show
detectable differences for the different boundary conditions. Compar-
199
isons of the correlations for the effect of viscosity ratio are therefore
presented separately for All Faces Open (AFO), Radial (TEC), and
Linear (OEO) boundary conditions.
3.1. Comparison of correlations
The rst correlation group is that of Ma et al. (1997):
tD;MMZ
1
= 2
Lc
s
K
p t
w nw
14
tD;Standard
s
1
+ 1
1 K
k*
k*
rnw
t
rw
= 2
Lc
w
+ nw
k*
k*
rw
rnw
15
tD;Standard
s
1 K
= 2
Lc
1+
w 1 +
k*
rw
k*
rnw
nw k*
rw
w *
krnw
t
16
It is well recognized that, a priori, the effective relative permeabilities and hence the ratio of the two effective relative permeabilities
are unknown. To cast the Standard factor in the best possible light, the
Standard correlation is presented using an optimized xed value of
/krnw
= 0.12. Values of krw
/krnw
in the
relative permeability ratio of krw
range 0.1 b krw/krnw b 0.3 gave a good t to the AFO and TEC data. For
/krnw
= 0.12. The reason for the
the OEO data the best t was for krw
different ranges in sensitivity is the degree of scatter in the data OEO
has much less scatter (see Fig. 2c, for example) than AFO. The third
dimensionless time of the comparison is that of Eq. (13).
3.1.1. All Faces Open
A comparison of the Fischer and Morrow (2006) data using the MMZ,
Standard, and MFMR dimensionless times is shown in Fig. 1 for All Faces
Open data that covers the range 0.01 b nw/ w b 43. The MMZ correlation
(Fig. 1a) shows that the original viscosity factor correlates the data
over the range of nw/ w ratios for which it was originally developed, but
becomes increasingly inaccurate as the viscosity ratio is reduced. The
/krnw
200
Fig. 1. Correlation of the all faces open data of Fischer and Morrow (2006) using three different functions to calculate the dimensionless time, tD. a) Ma et al. (1997) b) the Standard
theory using a best t relative permeability ratio and c) Mason, Fischer, Morrow, Ruth (new). The o and w numbers indicate the oil and waterglycerol (brine) viscosities in cP.
The new function (MFMR) does not include the relative permeability ratio but still gives the best correlation.
201
Fig. 2. Comparison of the three different correlations for tD for linear imbibition given by the One End Open boundary condition (Fischer et al., 2008). a) Ma et al. (1997) b) the best
Standard t and c) Mason, Fischer, Morrow, Ruth (new). The o and w numbers indicate the oil and waterglycerol (brine) viscosities in cP.
three correlation groups in Fig. 3. As for the All Faces Open data and the
One End Open data, the scaling group of Eq. (13) gives the best t
(Fig. 3c).
202
Fig. 3. Comparison of radial imbibition (Fischer et al., 2008) using the three different correlation factors. a) Ma et al. (1997) b) the best Standard t and c) Mason, Fischer, Morrow,
Ruth (new). The o and w numbers indicate the oil and waterglycerol (brine) viscosities in cP.
203
Fig. 4. Variation of the ratio of the effective relative permeabilities behind the front with viscosity ratio when the Standard function (Eq. (16)) is equated with the MFMR (new)
function (Eq. (13).
*
*
w
krw
krnw
w
which reduces to
k*rw
1
r
=
k*rnw
1 + 2 nw
w
18
19
Fig. 5. Comparison of the Viscosity Ratio Factors versus viscosity ratio (logarithmic scale) of Fischer and Morrow (2006) and Standnes (2009) with the new factor given here
(MFMR).
204
Fig. 6. Comparison of the Viscosity Ratio Factors (linear scale) of Fischer and Morrow (2006) and Standnes (2009) with the new factor given here (MFMR).
w
k*
rw
1
+
nw
k*
rnw
1
1
+
*
*
krw
krnw
!
20
and krnw
are xed values over each imbibition curve but
where krw
may take different values depending on the viscosity ratio. Different
to krw
that is
authors give different values. It is the ratio of krnw
important (see Eq. (20)) rather than their absolute values.
The new factor given here has
FMFMR =
2
r
nw
w 1 +
w
21
22
FRMML2 =
m
2
nw 1 =m m
1+
w
w
23
1
FStandnes = q
VE 1VE
w nw
24
Fig. 7. Comparison of the various Viscosity Scale Factors that have been proposed. The lines only cover the ranges to which the various correlation functions are claimed to apply.
5. Conclusions
A readily applied viscosity scaling group with no arbitrary factors
and no explicit relative permeabilities is proposed that closely
correlates data for a wide range of aqueous and oleic phase viscosities.
Even though there is large variation in ow rate during an
and
imbibition experiment, the effective relative permeabilities (krw
k
rnw) can be considered constant during the frontal ow period of any
single imbibition experiment. When the uid viscosity ratio changes,
the effective relative permeabilities that are used in the standard
analysis do not remain constant but change quite signicantly. The
correlated data was used to infer the variation of relative permeability
ratio with viscosity ratio.
Acknowledgement
The authors acknowledge support from ARAMCO, British Petroleum, ChevronTexaco, Total, ConocoPhillips, Shell, StatoilHydro, the
Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute at the University of Wyoming, the
National Petroleum Technology Ofce of the U.S. Department of
Energy, the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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