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1 - Introduction - 1.0 2
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All content following this page was uploaded by Anthony Hutin on 28 March 2022.
Contents:
- Porosity, permeability, tortuosity, and fluid saturation
- Wettability and capillary pressure
- Water in porous media
- Darcy’s law
Thus, for the injection of fluid through such a medium, one Sw , So , and Sg are the water, oil, and gas saturations. The
speaks of kinematic porosity or open porosity. This is because saturations can be related to the total or effective porosity. In
the volume in which a fluid can flow is less than the total reservoir engineering, this is usually the effective porosity.
This wettability depends on the adhesion energies between • γos > γws
the different phases and is characterized by the contact angle
• AT > 0 (adhesion tension is positive)
formed by the densest phase (Figure 5).
• 90◦ ≤ θ ≤ 180◦
Wa = γs + γl − γsl = γl (1 + cosθ )
1.3 Water in porous media gradients. The amount of bound water in the soil depends on
Saturated soils In saturated soils, water fills all the voids the surface area of the particles on which the water molecules
between the particles (Figure 7). If we exclude the water that can be adsorbed.
goes into the composition of minerals (water of constitution), Unsaturated soils In unsaturated soils, three phases coexist
it is necessary to distinguish bound water, which is attached to and generally water ”wets” (covers) the surface of the parti-
the surface of solid particles by molecular interaction forces cles, while the air is rather located in the middle of the pores.
(electric forces), and free water, which can moves between Depending on the degree of soil saturation, there are three
particles under the effect of gravity or pressure gradients. modes of interaction between the phases:
Figure 8. Poiseuille’s law in a capillary. Figure 10. Diagram of an oil ganglion upstream of a constric-
tion.
is done by the non-wetting fluid if one imposes a ∆P ≥ Pc
(large pores). For a non-wetting saturating fluid, the displace- Imbibition During an imbibition process, the wetting phase
ment is spontaneous thanks to the surrounding fluid. The saturation increases while the non-wetting phase decreases.
capillary pressure is therefore the excess pressure necessary
for the non-wetting phase to displace the wetting phase in a If the rock is water-wet:
capillary of given radius.
• Water occupies the small pores
In a porous medium, the restrictions between the pores can be • Presence of a film of water around the grains in the
represented by capillary tubes of r rays. Figure 9 shows the large pores
behaviour if water formation is the wetting phase and the oil
• If the porous medium saturated with oil is placed in
the non-wetting phase.
water, it will spontaneously displace the oil from the
small pores (imbibition)
• The mobility of the wetting phase increases
And vice versa if the rock is oil-wet.
Drainage During a drainage process, the non-wetting phase
saturation increases while wetting phase saturation decreases.
The mobility of the non-wetting phase increases, for example,
in the case of recovery by injecting water into an oil-wet
reservoir. A ”water-wet” system is favorable to the primary
and secondary recovery rate by water flooding.
Figure 9. Evolution of the height of water in a capillary as a Capillary pressure curves Capillarity controls the distri-
function of its radius. bution of fluids in the porous medium. Figure 11, describes
the evolution of capillary pressure as a function of the water
When hydrocarbons migrate in a water-wet formation: saturation of a sample of porous medium. It is obtained by
applying sufficient pressure to the non-wetting fluid in order
• The pores with large r are invaded first, water continues to displace the wetting fluid saturating the sample (drainage
to occupy the pores with small r phase). The amount of wetting fluid displaced is measured
• When the level of hydrocarbons rises, Pc grows and as a function of the applied capillary pressure. The capillary
forces the oil into the pores with increasingly smaller rs pressure is increased until the saturation of the wetting fluid
remains constant : irreducible water saturation (Swr ).
In order for an oil ganglion to pass a constriction of radius r, The capillary pressure is then gradually reduced allowing
it is necessary that ∆P between upstream and downstream is the wetting fluid to re-enter the sample and thus displace the
at least equal to Pc . Depending on the pore structure and the non-wetting fluid (imbibition phase) which remains when the
conditions, several cases are possible (Figure 10): capillary pressure becomes zero again at a residual oil satura-
tion Sor .
• passage with break (snap-off)
• passage without rupture The imbibition curve does not follow the same path as the
Figure 11. Capillary pressure curves. Figure 12. Diagram illustrating the D/d threshold above which
the particles are likely to remain trapped in the stack.
drainage curve. The fact that the two curves cannot be super-
responds to the case where the small sphere of diameter d
imposed corresponds to a hysteresis effect indicating that the
fits just into the smallest cavities of the stack. The smallest
capillary pressure Pc depends on the history of saturations.
cavities that can exist in a stack of spheres of diameter D are
those formed by the mutual contact of 4 spheres, forming a
The residual saturation can be considered to be the level of
tetrahedron (Figure 13). The ratio between D and d being
saturation at which there is a loss of hydraulic continuity. Swr
able to be registered in this cavity is worth:
and 1 − Sor define the upper and lower limits of the wetting
fluid saturation as shown in the figure above. r !−1
3
Darcy’s law The study of flows in a porous medium was Sa = −1 ∼ 4.5
2
demonstrated by Darcy in 1856, he demonstrated a linear re-
lationship between the flow speed and the pressure gradient If we consider only the geometric causes of capture:
applied on either side of the porous medium.
k ∆P
v=−
µ L
D3 √
Vp = 0.64 ( 2 − Ω)
12
where Ω is the solid angle of the tetrahedron. The volume
Vp is then an estimate of the accessible volume for spheres
of diameter d in the smallest pore of the structure. We can
therefore define the fraction of volume of tetrahedral cavity
N p occupied by N small spheres as:
V
Np =
Vp
With: 3
4 d
V= π N
3 2
And so, we have: −3
D
Np ∝
d
v1.0 - 03/28/2022