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Capillary Pressure
Some slides in this section are modified from NExT PERF Short Course Notes, 1999.
However, many of the slides appears to have been obtained from other primary
sources that are not cited by NExT. Some slides have a notes section.
Applications of Capillary
Pressure Data
w g Z
w po
Pc,ow ; Z , water wet
D
Drainage
Pd
Swt
Sm
0.5
Imbibition
IMBIBITION
Pc
Si
1.0
DRAINAGE PROCESS
Fluid flow process in which the saturation of the nonwetting phase
increases
Examples:
Hydrocarbon (oil or gas) filling the pore space and displacing the
original water of deposition in water-wet rock
Waterflooding an oil reservoir in which the reservoir is oil wet
Gas injection in an oil or water wet oil reservoir
Pressure maintenance or gas cycling by gas injection in a retrograde
condensate reservoir
Evolution of a secondary gas cap as reservoir pressure decreases
IMBIBITION PROCESS
IMBIBITION
Fluid flow process in which the
saturation of the wetting phase increases
Mobility of wetting phase increases as
wetting phase saturation increases
Examples:
Accumulation of oil in an oil wet reservoir
Waterflooding an oil reservoir in which the reservoir is
water wet
Accumulation of condensate as pressure decreases in
a dew point reservoir
Pc vs. Sw Function
Reflects Reservoir Quality
Core Lithofacies
Core Pore
Plugs Types
Petrophysical
Data
vs k Capillary
Pressure
5
High Quality
4
3
Function moves up
and right, and
becomes less L
shaped as reservoir
quality decreases
Low Quality
Capillary Pressure
16
Decreasing
Permeability,
Decreasing
12
C
B
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Water Saturation
Modified from NExT 1999, after xx)
Well-sorted
Poorly sorted
Decreasing
Water saturation, %
CAPILLARY PRESSURE
- DEFINITION The pressure difference existing across
the interface separating two immiscible
fluids in capillaries (e.g. porous media).
Calculated as:
Pc = pnwt - pwt
One fluid wets the surfaces of the formation
rock (wetting phase) in preference to the other
(non-wetting phase).
Gas is always the non-wetting phase in both
oil-gas and water-gas systems.
Oil is often the non-wetting phase in water-oil
systems.
Where:
Pc = capillary pressure
Pnwt = pressure in nonwetting phase
pwt = pressure in wetting phase
Air
Water
Considering the porous media as a collection of capillary tubes provides useful
insights into how fluids behave in the reservoir pore spaces.
Water rises in a capillary tube placed in a beaker of water, similar to water (the
wetting phase) filling small pores leaving larger pores to non-wetting phases of
reservoir rock.
2 aw cos
h
r g aw
This relation can be derived from balancing the upward force due to adhesion
tension and downward forces due to the weight of the fluid (see ABW pg 135).
The wetting phase (water) rise will be larger in small capillaries.
h
=
Height of water rise in capillary tube, cm
aw
=
Interfacial tension between air and water,
dynes/cm
=
Air/water contact angle, degrees
r
=
Radius of capillary tube, cm
g
=
Acceleration due to gravity, 980 cm/sec2
aw
=
Density difference between water and air, gm/cm3
Contact angle, , is measured through the more dense phase (water in this
case).
AIR
WATER
Ayers, 2001
Air
pa2
pw2
Water
= pw2 = p2
pa1
= p2 - a g h
pw1
= p2 - w g h
Pc
= pa1 - pw1
= w g h - a g h
2 aw cos
Pc
r
2 ow cos
Pc
r
Pc = Capillary pressure between oil and water