The Effect of Instability on Relative Permeability Curves Obtained by the Dynamic-Displacement Method

Abstract

5PE )47/3 summary.A study was undertaken to investigate how instability would affect the oii[water relative permeability curves bhtained by the. dynamic-displacement method. In this method, stable Buckley-Leverett displacement theorj is used to calculate relative permeability cuties from coreflood dsta, Thus, to obtain the true relative permeability curves by the dynarnic-disp~cement method, the coreflocd must he stable. However, the method frequently has been applied to umstable core ftoods. The consequence of this aPPlimtion of the method has not been previously reponed.We compared~illwater relative permeability cw-vis from steady-state a"d dyqamic-dkplacement experiments at several levels of in.stsbility. The results 'showed that tbe dynamicdkplacement relative permeability curves deviated "significantly from the steadystate cu'i-ves as the degree of instabili~increased. This observation indicates the need to scale Iaboratow Tel?ive pe~eability measurements to account for instabili~. To obtain representative relative permeability curves for numerical modeling of. a resetvoir, laboratory displacement experiments should be conducted at the same degree of instabili!qr as that iu the reservoir.

An Experimental Study of the Influence of Interfacial Tension on Water–Oil Two-Phase Relative Permeability

“…To overcome well-known difficulties in measuring relative permeability curves under low IFT, several attempts were made (Fulcher et al 1985;Peters and Khataniar 1987;Chisholm et al 1990), involving either increasing viscous forces in displacing fluids or increasing the capillary number. However, large increase in the viscosity of the displacing, aqueous phase may lead to too large decrease in displacing rates or mobility.…”

A Bayesian Methodology for Estimating Relative Permeability Curves

“…Also, the flow regime characterized by the laboratory experiment may not match that in the field. 3 If suitable estimates from core samples are not available, relative permeability curves may be obtained with empirical methods 2 or from experiences with similar reservoirs. Of course, these types of estimates suffer from the large uncertainty commonly associated with empirical models.…”

Characterization of viscous fingering during displacements of low tension natural surfactant in fractured multi-layered heavy oil systems

“…Stokes et al (1986Stokes et al ( ) 1986 The authors demonstrated that in the medium which preferentially wet by displaced fluid, the width of Page 18 of 49 A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 19 fingers is comparable by the pore size and independent to other parameters. Peters and Khataniar (1987) 1987…”