Liquid-liquid Immiscible Displacement In Unconsolidated Porous Media

Abstract

An improved understanding of how one fluid displaces another in a one-dimensional porous medium can be gained by measuring saturation as afunction of time and distance, a pro-cedure rarely undertaken. To this end, a series of immiscible displacements were conducted, at various viscosity ratios, in which in-situ saturations were measured using a relatively new R.G. Bentsen Ramon G. Bentsen graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a B.Sc. degree (petroleum engineering) in 1955. Subsequent to graduation, he worked f6r Schlumberger Sorenco in Venezuela and Colombia, and with McCullough Tool Company and Im-perial Oil Limited in Alberta. He then enrolled for advanced study at Pennsylvania State University, where he received M.Sc. (1964) and Ph.D. (1968) degrees in petroleum and natural gas engineering. After obtaining his Ph.D., he joined the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Alberta as a member of the Department of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering. Currently, Dr. Bentsen holds the position of Associate Professor of Petroleum Engineering in the Department of Mineral Engineering. He is a member of the CIM, the AIME and the Society of Sigma Xi. J. Saeedi Jawaid Saeedi holds two mechanical engineering degress, a B.Sc. degree (1970) from N.E.D. Government Engineering College, Univer-sity of Karachi and an M.Sc. degree (1973) from the Oklahoma State University. Subsequent to obtaining these degrees, he worked for three years with the Oil and Gas Development Corporation of Pakistan. He then attended the University of Alberta, where he ob-tained an M.Sc. degree (1979) in petroleum engineering. On gradua-tion from the University of Alberta, Mr. Saeedi worked for a year as a reservoir engineer with the Arabian Oil Company in Saudi Arabia. He is currently employed as a senior research assistant at the University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. , Montreal technique based on microwave attenuation. The experimental saturation profiles obtained in this manner were compared with those obtained by solving numerically a recently derived Lagrangian formulation of the immiscible displacement equa-tion. Finally, the results obtained were analyzed in the light of published scaling groups and a recently proposed stability criterion. The results of this analysis suggest that one-dimensional, immiscible displacement theory reasonably represents displacements carried out at favourable mobility ratios. For adverse mobility ratio displacements, in horizontal systems, a stability criterion must be satisfied before the theory can be said to represent the displacement process. Introduction Steady-state methods for measuring relative permeability re-quire approximately one day to acquire a complete relative permeability curve. Extemal-drive methods, on the other hand, can acquire the same information in a few hours.However, it is well known that external-drive techniques have severe limitations for determining water-oil flow proper-tieS(1,2,3) These limitations may arise because of a violation of one or more of the...

Analysis and Correlations of Viscous Fingering in Low-Tension Polymer Flooding in Heavy Oil Reservoirs

“…They noted that fingers are almost one order of magnitude wider in a water-wet system than in an oil-wet system. Bentsen and Saeedi presented the evidence of a stable 0.5 saturation zone at the inlet end. Paterson et al presented the viscous fingering patterns that occur when water or a surfactant solution displaces the oil in an oil-wet porous medium composed of fused plastic particles.…”

A Lagrangian Approach for Oil Recovery in Two-Phase Porous Media Flow

“…Bentsen and Saeedi (9) presented numerical results obtained by solving the Lagrangian formulation of the immiscible displacement equation using the explicit finite difference technique (similar to that presented by Bentsen (1) ) and they compared the results with those obtained experimentally in the laboratory. Shen and Ruth [2,3,8] numerically solved the transient and the steady state forms of Bentsen's equation using the Galerkin-finite element method.…”

“…For convenience sake, it is usual to normalize the variables in the unsteady state form of the fractional flow equation (Equation 5) and the displacement equation (Equation (9). Normalization provides insight into the effect of the various parameters.…”

The effect of pore throat size and injection flowrate on the determination and sensitivity of different capillary number values at high-capillary-number flow in porous media

“…The reason behind the substantial desaturation (i.e. recovery) of the displaced phase after the breakthrough is the existence of a stable zone, which progresses along the porous networks (Gupta andGreenkorn 1974, Bentsen andSaeedi 1981). This is the major reason for considerable desaturation of the displaced phase after infinite pore volumes of the displacing fluid are injected after the breakthrough.…”