X-ray tomography measurements of power-law cluster size distributions for the nonwetting phase in sandstones

Iglauer, Stefan; Favretto, Stefano; Spinelli, Gregorio Gerardo; Schena, Gianni; Blunt, Martin J.

doi:10.1103/physreve.82.056315

Cited by 130 publications

(124 citation statements)

References 19 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

105

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In residual trapping the injected CO 2 displaces water in the reservoir, and a fraction of CO 2 is trapped by capillary forces. The process is analogous to the trapping of oil/natural gas during waterflooding in hydrocarbon reservoirs [18,19]. The extent of values of brine-CO 2 -rock contact angles , similar to what is observed in structural trapping.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 56%

Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Water/CO2-quartz Interfacial Properties: Application to Subsurface Gas Injection

2013

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Global warming due to Carbon Dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions from fossil fuel consumption remains an extremely difficult problem to mitigate. One of the many purposed methods to tackle rising emissions of CO 2 is subsurface injection into geological formations known as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).A major challenge, that projects involving subsurface gas injection have, is predicting the amount of gas that will be trapped in the formation effectively and safely. A major contributing factor to this uncertainty is the lack of accurate experimental data on contact angles between the subsurface rocks, formation water and CO 2 . The two main difficulties with employing experimental work to estimate these parameters are the existence of partially contradicting results and the difficulty in accurately recreating the range of subsurface conditions in the laboratory. Molecular dynamics computer simulations provide a microscopic approach to recreate subsurface conditions and to explain experimental contradicting results.We report here molecular dynamics investigations on the influence of divalent salts on the CO 2 /water/quartz contact angle. We also investigate N 2 /water/quartz and H 2 S/water/quartz systems, in order to assess the impact that the gas has on the contact angles. The quartz surface used for these simulations was a fully coordinated quartz crystal. In addition, we present results for a hydroxylated quartz crystal model, which we have developed for this work. The dependence of the contact angles on the degree of hydroxylation is discussed.

show abstract

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 56%

Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Water/CO2-quartz Interfacial Properties: Application to Subsurface Gas Injection

2013

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…They either both exist in blobs with a dimension less than the critical length scale or both are hydraulically continuous. In reality either both the fluids are hydraulically continuous (when both brine and CO 2 can flow) or one is hydraulically continuous (the flowing phase) and the other exists as ganglia that are mostly smaller than the critical length scale (the trapped, immobile phase) (Iglauer et al, 2010).…”

Section: The Fluid Bulk Modulus -Existing Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using time-lapse seismic monitoring to identify trapping mechanisms during CO2 sequestration

Cairns¹,

Jakubowicz²,

Lonergan³

et al. 2012

International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…CDC in sintered glass porous media has also been investigated by Armstrong et al (2014) in order to discuss the capillary number at which oil mobilization occurs. Some works have also been done with rock samples but essentially in the context of CO 2 sequestration (Andrew et al 2014;Iglauer et al 2010Iglauer et al , 2012.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Datta et al (2014),Tallakstad et al (2009a, b) (glass beads) andIglauer et al (2010) (sandstones) plotted the ganglion volume distribution N (v) as a function of v = R 3…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Multi-Scale Investigation of Pore Structure Impact on the Mobilization of Trapped Oil by Surfactant Injection

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The evolution of the residual oil saturation as a function of the trapping number N t (capillary number plus Bond number), is generally known as the capillary desaturation curve (CDC) and constitutes an important input parameter in chemical enhanced oil recovery flooding. However, less importance has been paid to the investigation of the influence of oil ganglia evacuation on relative permeabilities. We report on an experimental investigation dealing with the effect of flooding parameters, fluid interfacial properties and rock structure on the CDC and on the water relative permeability. Experiments were performed on a set of water-wet sandstone plugs with different petrophysical properties, and X-ray computed tomography (CT-scan) imaging was used to accurately measure the local oil saturation. Oil ganglia size distribution as well as pore scale geometrical properties was also quantified at the scale of the micrometer using high-resolution micro-computed tomography (MCT). Results showed that the CDC depends on the pore structure and specifically on the average throat radius and the inverse of the relative permeability. Oil ganglia size distribution obtained by MCT follows a typical power law as suggested by percolation theory. We also showed that CDC obtained from macroscopic measurements can be predicted from the measured oil ganglia size distribution and rock structure geometrical parameters. In parallel, we observed that for low trapping numbers, water relative permeability is independent of the trapping number. However, for intermediate trapping numbers, a strong dependence of the water relative permeability on the latter can be noticed. In this range, we showed that water relative permeability has a specific scaling with the trapping number.

show abstract

X-ray tomography measurements of power-law cluster size distributions for the nonwetting phase in sandstones

Cited by 130 publications

References 19 publications

Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Water/CO2-quartz Interfacial Properties: Application to Subsurface Gas Injection

Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Water/CO2-quartz Interfacial Properties: Application to Subsurface Gas Injection

Using time-lapse seismic monitoring to identify trapping mechanisms during CO2 sequestration

A Multi-Scale Investigation of Pore Structure Impact on the Mobilization of Trapped Oil by Surfactant Injection

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About