A Comparison of Relative Permeability between Centrifuge and Unsteady State Experiments Results

Abstract

Relative Permeability is the ratio of the effective permeability for a particular fluid to reference or base permeability of the rock . It is one of the most fundamental rock-fluid characteristics in multi-phase flow, critical influencing both the initial reservoir fluids distribution and the dynamic process of oil recovery. The determination of relative permeability requires laboratory experiments, which are expensive and time consuming .Assuming that core material is available, typically a limited number of core plugs are consider for testing. There is uncertainty in the results from two different methods of relative permeability in the same formation . The primary objective of this study was measuring and normalize the relative permeability for an oil/brine in a sandstone core using the Unsteady state and Centrifuge methods. Investigation and compression of the relative permeability curves for the two methods. Measure and comprise of sandstone core samples using SCAL data. Four samples of SCAL data were available for this study from the same formation two of them is Unsteady state relative permeability and the other two for Centrifuge capillary pressure. The final comparison between centrifuge relative permeability curves and unsteady state relative permeability curves showed a very good correlation for the non wetting phase curves, but completely different shapes for the wetting phase curves.