Supercritical CO2-Brine Relative Permeability Experiments in Reservoir Rocks—Literature Review and Recommendations

Abstract

The relative permeability of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) to brine influences the injectivity and plume migration when CO 2 is injected in a reservoir for CO 2 storage or enhanced oil recovery (EOR) purposes. It is common practice to determine the relative permeability of a fluid by means of laboratory measurements. Two principal approaches are used to obtain a relative permeability data: steady state and unsteady state. Although CO 2 has been employed in enhanced oil recovery, not much data can be found in the open literature. The few studies available report wide ranges for CO 2 relative permeability in typical sedimentary rocks such as Berea sandstone, dolomite, and others. The experimental setups vary for each study, employing steady and unsteady state approaches, different experimental parameters such as temperature, pressure, rock type, etc. and various interpretation methods. Hence, it is inherently difficult to compare the data and determine the origin of differences. It is evident that more experiments are needed to close this knowledge gap on relative permeability. This article concludes that standards for lab measurements need to be defined a. to establish a reliable CO 2 -brine relative permeability measurement method that can be repeated under the same conditions in any lab and b. to enable comparison of the data to accurately predict the well injection and fluid migration behavior in the reservoir.

Temporal variations in near-wellbore pressures during CO2 injection in saline aquifers

“…At the beginning of the injection phase in a CO 2 sequestration project, CO 2 cannot override the resident brine because it has to first displace the brine. As a result, a certain threshold pressure is required to displace the resident brine (Vilarrasa et al, 1988;Müller, 2011). At this stage, lateral viscous flow is dominant while vertical flow (buoyancy) is negligible.…”

Integrated geophysical and hydromechanical assessment for CO2 storage: shallow low permeable reservoir sandstones

“…The most usual case of study is an originally brine‐saturated rock sample that is subjected to CO 2 or CO 2 –brine mixture flow. This sort of flooding test can be carried out using either steady or unsteady state flow techniques (Müller ). X‐ray computed tomography (CT) is the preferred tool to accurately measure CO 2 partial saturations (Berg et al .…”

Cyclic CO2 – H2O injection and residual trapping: implications for CO2 injection efficiency and storage security

“…Field observations of cyclic water and CO2 injection are primarily in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects where the third fluid phase (hydrocarbon) and production of fluids complicates the interpretation of the pressure profiles as pertaining to residual CO2 (Eshiet and Sheng, 2014;Gamadi et al, 2014;Hovorka, 2013;Kampman et al, 2014;Meyer, 2005;Müller, 2011). However, a number of field experiments have been performed in CO2 -brine only systems that allow comparison with the experimental and modelling data presented Modelling of enhanced trapping injection strategies including cyclic CO2-water at the CO2 field experiment in Israel (Heletz) (Rasmusson et al, 2016) is presented and discussed in the SI, however field results are not yet published so cannot be further compared here.…”