The Role of Capillary-Pressure in Improving the Numerical Simulation of Multi-phase Flow in

Porous Media

Authors: Alzayer, H.; Jahanbakhsh, A.; Sohrabi, M. (Heriot-Watt University)

Capillary pressure (Pc) is a very important physical parameter to describe multiphase

flow in porous media. It is a force acting between two immiscible phases and it is
quantified as the pressure difference between the non-wetting and wetting phases. The
drainage capillary pressure can be used to define the initial distribution of fluids within
the reservoir model. For oil reservoirs with an Oil-Water Contact (OWC), the two-phase
drainage oil-water Pc is used to initialize the model with the fluid saturations above the
free water level (FWL). The capillary pressure and relative permeability curves for each
rock type can be measured in the laboratory and entered, in tabulated form, into the
numerical simulators. Indeed the relative permeability and capillary pressure input in the
numerical simulation need to be consistent. However, the imbibition capillary pressure
where the water saturation is increasing as a result of waterflooding or aquifer influx into
the reservoir is often ignored or misused. The reason behind ingnoring imbibition
capillary pressure at reservoir-scale simulation is that the pressure drop across coarse
grids often higher than the capillary pressure, which makes Pc negligible. In some cases,
reservoir engineer try to capture the effect of imbibition capillary pressure within the
relative permeability function itself. This approach is somehow questionable due to the
possibility of viscous force dominating the flow in the unsteady state coreflood
experiments. Currently, it is widely accepted in the oil and gas industry that imbibition
capillary pressure in the oil reservoir under waterflooding set to be zero while accounting
of its effect within the relative permeability function. However, capillary forces are very
important in multiphase flow in porous media (X. Wang, V.A., 2016) and must be
properly handled in simulating the reservoir performance.

To ensure the multiphase flow physics is rightly modelled in the numerical simulation,
the balance between capillary, viscous, and gravity forces inside the porous medium need
to be understood. For example, the pressure drop across a low permeability core sample
during coreflood experiment could be high enough to mask the effect of prevailing
capillary force. Therefore, the relative permeability obtained from such coreflood
experiment may have any capillary effect inherent in it. However, in the reservoir away
from wellbores, the capillary pressure can still play a major role in the fluid flow through
low permeability porous media. What would be the best way to capture the flow physics
in this situation? On the other hand, coreflooding high permeable core sample will exhibit
stronger capillary effect due to the low-pressure drop across the core. Relative
permeability obtained from this experiment will have within it the capillary pressure
effect. Therefore, it is important to know how to capture the capillary pressure effect into
the numerical simulation, especially for reservoir-scale simulation.

Wettability of the rock surface is also important for the multiphase flow in porous media.
The shape and end-points of the relative permeability curves as well as the imbibition
capillary pressure behave differently for water-wet, mixed-wet, and oil-wet rocks. In the
water-wet system, the water relative permeability end-point (krw') will be low while the
oil relative permeability end-point (kro’) should be higher compared to the mixed-wet
system. Primary drainage capillary pressure for both systems behaves similarly but for
the imbibition Pc, a water-wet system shows higher instantaneous imbibition while the
mixed-wet system demonstrates more forced imbibition (Abdallah, W. et al., 2007).

Numerical simulation can be used to design a numerical coreflood experiment (NCFE)

for the purpose of investigation. Various NCFEs’ can be generated to evaluate the effect
of certain parameters and to conduct sensitivity studies and allocate more research
resources towards the most influential parameters. Cumulative production and pressure
data can be generated for different conditions and used for example to estimate the
relative permeability and capillary pressure of a given system. In this paper, the NCFE
represent a water-wet system was used to obtaine a set of relative permeability and
capillary pressure and then tested at reservoir-scale 2D corss-section simulation. The aim
is to understand the role of capillary pressure in multi-phase flow simulations.

In this paper, we used a NCFE to generate the required data for back calculating the flow
functions for three cases:

1. Both Pc and kr are obtained simultaneously to match the numerical experimental

data.

2. Pc is ignored (Pc is equal to zero) and kr is estimated to match the numerical

experimental data.

3. Pc is given (assumed to be measure by different experiment) and kr is estimated to

match the numerical experimental data.

Then the flow functions (kr and Pc) for each case were used in a reservoir-scale 2D
simulation model with similar properties to the NCFE to evaluate the difference in
reservoir performance for each flow function. Another section is also included to discuss
the role of Pc for different grid sizes and its effect in defining the waterflood front shape
for 1000 mD reservoir-scale cross-section.

This study, which was published on https://doi.org/10.2118/186052-MS, concludes that

capillary pressure plays a very important role in multi-phase flow simulation. If the
reservoir rock exhibits high capillary pressure, which is usually the case, capillary force
will act to disperse the water from high water saturation to low water saturation and from
high permeability to low permeability, which slows down the the water movement. This
can significantly change the predicted water breakthrough time, the oil production plateau
length, and the ultimate recovery.

We plan to continue investigating the role of Pc by the same methodology for different
permeability values and wettability conditions. Also, the NCFE idea will be extended to
cover a wider-range of evaluations including the effect of gravity, injection rate and
heterogeneities.