CERC Research

CERC Publications

CO2 Study
 

Evaluation of CO2      Water Imbibition Relative Permeability Curves in Sandstone Core Flooding — A CFD Study

AUTHORS: Tathagata Acharya, Tapinder Dhaliwal, Alina Ludian, Gorang Popli, Benjamin Wilemon, Leonardo Hernandez, Maryam Farahani, Liaosha Song

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Greenhouse gases such as CO2   can be safely captured and stored in geologic formations, which in turn can reduce the carbon imprint in the Earth’s atmosphere and therefore help toward reducing global warming. The relative permeability characteristics in CO2   brine or CO2   water systems provide insight into the CO2   trapping efficacy of formations such as sandstone rocks. In this research, CO2 water imbibition relative permeability characteristics in a typical sandstone core sample are numerically evaluated. This work uses transient computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to study relative permeability characteristics, and a sensitivity analysis is performed based on two different injection pressures and absolute permeability values of the sandstone rock material. Results show that when the irreducible water fraction remains unchanged, the imbibition relative permeability to the non-wetting phase decreases with an increase in injection pressure within the sandstone core sample. Also, with the irreducible water fraction being unchanged, relative permeabilities to both non-wetting and wetting phases decrease with an increase in the absolute permeability of the rock material. Finally, at irreducible water saturation, relative permeability to the gas phase decreases with an increase in injection pressure.

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Sandstone Study
 

Evaluation of Relative Permeability Curves in Sandstone Core Flooding Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

AUTHORS: Tathagata Acharya, Liaosha Song, Elizabeth Duginski, Andrew Goodwin

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Geological carbon sequestration is a proven method of safely storing carbon dioxide in formations, thereby reducing atmospheric carbon imprint and mitigating global warming. The relative permeability to carbon dioxide versus brine/water in geological formations determines flow characteristics of one fluid in the presence of another. The objective of this research is to evaluate the relative permeability to carbon dioxide in both the gas phase and the supercritical state in the presence of water in a Vedder sandstone core sample. The sandstone sample used is medium- to fine-grain arkosic artenite containing primarily quartz, potassium feldspar, plagioclase, and biotite. The effect of the viscosity ratio between the non-wetting phase and the wetting phase, on the relative permeability to the non-wetting phase, is studied. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used for this study. Results show that with the same amount of irreducible water fraction, the endpoint relative permeability to the non-wetting phase is approximately one order of magnitude lower for supercritical carbon dioxide than for gaseous carbon dioxide. The endpoint relative permeability does not change significantly with the change in inlet pressure for gaseous carbon dioxide. Additionally, the endpoint relative permeability to the non-wetting phase increases with an increase in the viscosity ratio. Results suggest that CFD can be effectively used to study relative permeability, precluding expensive experiments.

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