PE 406 Dr. dahlia A.

Al-Obaidi

Experimental Data in Reservoir Rocks—Capillary Number

Correlation

Considerable experimental data exist on the trapping of residual oil in rocks

and other porous media. Most of these data consist of measurements of residual
saturations when a nonwetting phase (oil) is displaced by a wetting phase (water).
The list below gives typical experimental steps in the collection of such data. For
this discussion, water will be used as the displacing fluid and oil as the displaced
fluid, although the procedure is applicable for any two immiscible phases.
1. A core is first saturated with the water phase to be evaluated, part of which will
remain as an initial water saturation after Step 2.
2. The core next is flooded with oil to establish an initial oil saturation. This flood
leaves a residual saturation of water comparable to that found as connate water in
reservoirs.
3. The core is then flooded with the water phase being evaluated at a specific
constant rate. This flood establishes ROS for the particular flood conditions. The
water phase in Step 3 is the same as in Step 1.
4. Material balances on all fluids are maintained for each step of the experiment to
determine saturations. Pressure drops are also measured.

The use of dimensionless groupings of variables involving the ratio of viscous to

capillary forces has proved to be reasonably successful.

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PE 406 Dr. dahlia A. Al-Obaidi

Some authors use the Darcy velocity instead of the interstitial velocity.

Vdarcy w krw kP kP

N ca 
*
 or
 ow  ow  ow

Since Vdarcy  V
N *ca   N ca

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PE 406 Dr. dahlia A. Al-Obaidi

Figs. 2.19 and 2.20 (Moore and Slobod 1956; Abrams 1975) show two
experimental data sets that have been correlated by use of the dimensionless group
in Eq. 2.31. The plots show ROS as a function of Nca/cos θ for a large number of
experiments. The data collectively represent experiments on cores of various lengths
and in which velocity, viscosity, and IFT were varied over significant ranges. Water
was the wetting phase for all experiments shown.
The data of Moore and Slobod (1956) (Fig. 2.19) were measured with the procedure
described earlier. However, the reported residual saturations are values at the time
of water breakthrough rather than final saturations. Oil recovery after water
breakthrough was small for the water-wet system investigated.
The data in Fig. 2.20 (Abrams 1975) came from a strongly water-wet porous medium
with cos θ ≈ 1.0. The results show that at capillary numbers less than approximately
10−6, the residual oil is relatively constant and is not a function of the magnitude of
Nca. The correlation also indicates that if the value of Nca could be increased to
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more than approximately 10−5 in a flood, then the magnitude of residual oil would
decrease. As seen, the projected decrease in Sor is a smooth function of Nca. At
values on the order of 10−2, virtually all oil is recovered. Correlation shows that Nca
can be increased by either:
(1) Increasing the flow rate of the displacing fluid.
(2) Increasing the viscosity of the displacing fluid.
(3) Reducing IFT between the displaced and displacing fluids.

Avoid the definition involving cos in the denominator, since its value can
approach zero for neutrally-wet rocks.

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PE 406 Dr. dahlia A. Al-Obaidi

Effect of Rock Wettability on Trapping.

The model and experimental data described earlier were based on trapping of
a nonwetting phase. Solid wettability of a phase affects the nature and, to some
extent, the magnitude of trapping. A prime example of the effect of wettability is the
asymmetry of relative permeability curves. Fig. 2.24 shows typical curves for
strongly water-wet and strongly oil-wet systems. At a given saturation of a fluid, the
relative permeability to that fluid will be larger if it is the nonwetting rather than the
wetting fluid. This is clearly seen, for example, by comparing the relative
permeabilities of water at a water saturation of 60% in Figs. 2.24a and 2.24b. The
water relative permeability value is much larger when water is the nonwetting phase
because of the location of the wetting and nonwetting phases in the pore structure
relative to the solid boundaries. A nonwetting phase tends to be trapped as isolated
drops when the nonwetting phase is displaced by a wetting phase. The isolated drops
are held by strong capillary forces that cannot be overcome by the relatively small
viscous forces, and the trapped phase tends to reside in the larger pores. Flooding at
successively larger capillary numbers displaces the trapped phase from smaller to
larger pores successively.

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