Volume 1: Energy Innovations: Accelerated Deployment, New Concepts, and Emerging Technologies

Further Study on the Parametric Variation Trend of the Relative Permeability Curve Renfeng Yang, Jinqing Zhang, Li Yang, Shasha Tang, Han Chen, Sheng Guo

Abstract

The relative permeability curves are the key parameters of mechanics of fluid flowing through porous media multiphase flow, which was influenced by many factors. However, only few study on the correlativity between relative permeability curves and porous media parameters were conducted, which is unfavorable for actual application. The capillary pressure and the relative permeability curve testing experiments were measured simultaneously for the same core samples, which could be used for theoretical and mathematical statistics analysis. The fractal theoretical model was used to analyze the capillary pressure curve and the fractal dimensions could be obtained through regression. Theoretical analysis and mathematical statistics were used for analyze the correlation between the relative permeability parameters and the physical property parameters of the porous media. The most significant finding is that the better the physical property parameters are, the lower the irreducible water saturation and the residual oil saturation are, and the higher the wetting phase endpoint values are. But the correlation between the oil phase index and water phase index were not good enough with the physical property parameters, however satisfied with the fractal dimension. The parametric variation trend of the relative permeability curve could be not only used for the development effect improvement, but also the porous media parameters control for other engineering fields application.

Keywords relative permeability, capillary pressure, fractal theoretical model