Pore-Scale Imaging of the Oil Cluster Dynamic during Drainage and Imbibition Using In Situ X-Ray Microtomography

Abstract EN

We imaged water-wet and oil-wet sandstones under two-phase flow conditions for different flooding states by means of X-ray computed microtomography (μCT) with a spatial resolution of 2.1 μm/pixel.

We systematically study pore-scale trapping of the nonwetting phase as well as size and distribution of its connected clusters and disconnected globules.

We found a lower Sor, 19.8%, for the oil-wet plug than for water-wet plug (25.2%).

Approximate power-law distributions of the water and oil cluster sizes were observed in the pore space.

Besides, the τ value of the wetting phase gradually decreased and the nonwetting phase gradually increased during the core-flood experiment.

The remaining oil has been divided into five categories; we explored the pore fluid occupancies and studied size and distribution of the five types of trapped oil clusters during different drainage stage.

The result shows that only the relative volume of the clustered oil is reduced, and the other four types of remaining oil all increased.

Pore structure, wettability, and its connectivity have a significant effect on the trapped oil distribution.

In the water sandstone, the trapped oil tends to occupy the center of the larger pores during the water imbibition process, leading to a stable specific surface area and a gradually decreasing oil capillary pressure.

Meanwhile, in oil-wet sandstone, the trapped oil blobs that tend to occupy the pores corner and attach to the walls of the pores have a large specific surface area, and the change of the oil capillary pressure was not obvious.

These results have revealed the well-known complexity of multiphase flow in rocks and preliminarily show the pore-level displacement physics of the process.