Simulation of Three-phase Flow in Porous Media Including Capillary Pressure Representing Variation in Rock Wettability

摘要

The effect of including a three-phase representation of the flow parameters has been investigated using a three-phase simulator in a black oil modulus. The simulation approaches include the complexity of three- phase flow, relative permeability hysteresis, dynamic phase trapping functions, and three-phase capillary pressure. Three-phase flow in WAG processes are characterized by lower relative permeability of the injected fluids, because of flow path hysteresis and trapping of phases. In addition, three-phase capillary pressure gives a significant effect to the size of three-phase zone, breakthrough time and recovery. It is important to incorporate these effects to have a correct description of the physics of the multi-phase flow performance. Three-phase capillary pressure is generated by network modeling for different wettability system. The significance of different three-phase capillary pressure representations is studies by varying wettability of the porous medium. Immiscible WAG cycles are investigated using a sector model. These studies show the importance of using a more detailed fluid flow description in simulation of immiscible WAG processes.