Sharif Digital Repository

Imbibition process is known to be an important recovery mechanism in naturally fractured reservoirs with water-wet matrix blocks that are imposed to water influx from an active aquifer or water flooding. Matrix blocks which are subjected to water flooding or water invasion from active aquifers do not become immersed in water at once, but they experience gradual rising of water in fracture. But most of imbibition studies are performed under conditions of totally immersed cores in static aqueous phase. Surfactants are known to reduce residual oil saturation by decreasing interfacial tension (IFT) between oil and water. On the other hand, considerable reduction of IFT due to surfactant... 

Development of pore network models for real porous media requires a detailed understanding of physical processes occurring on the microscopic scale and a complete description of porous media morphology. In this study, the microstructure of porous media has been represented by three dimensional networks of interconnected pores and throats which are designed by an object oriented approach. Afterwards, the connectivity of the system has been optimized by an optimization algorithm. To validate the methodology, a network of a carbonate sample is constructed. In this model, the geometrical characteristics of the pores and throats, such as their shapes, effective radii and lengths, are selected... 

Accurate prediction of relative permeability for various reservoir rocks at various saturation conditions has been of concern for a long time in petroleum industry. Relative permeability is known as one of the most significant parameters in simulation of actual multi-phase flow through porous media during life-time of a hydrocarbon reservoir. In addition, it plays important role in oil production and well completion. Direct experimental measurement in order to determine relative permeability of porous rock has long been recorded in petroleum related literature. However, empirical methods for determining relative permeability are becoming more widely used, particularly with the advent of... 

Capillary Imbibition is an important mechanism in producing oil from matrix blocks in fractured reservoirs. In a water-wet fractured reservoir, if the rise of water level in fracture is in a way that at all the moments the water front in fracture is lower than that in the matrix block we expect co-current imbibition. Iranian reservoirs have large matrix blocks and co-current imbibition can be expectable. Till this time, not many investigations have been done on co-current imbibition in and out of our country, Iran. In this thesis, an experimental investigation on co-current imbibition will be done for different conditions. The main goal of this thesis is the study of co-current imbibition in... 

In imbibition process, as one of the main mechanisms of recovery from naturally fractured reservoirs, a wetting fluid enters matrix blocks and produces nonwetting phase from blocks as result of interaction between capillary, gravity and viscous forces. Depending on various characteristics of system different types of imbibition like counter-current spontaneous imbibition, cocurrent spontaneous imbibition and dynamic counter-current imbibition could occur. In order to predict recovery from matrix blocks scaling equations can be used. In this thesis suitable scaling equations are presented for different types of imbibition by using analytical solutions. The studies cases are counter-current... 

In this study, a tree-dimensional random pore-scale network model is used to simulate the membrane contactor porous medium. Drainage and imbibition phenomena is simulated to have a better knowledge of liquid and/gas intrusion trough the membrane porous structure. A genetic algorithm is used as an optimization tool. Several variables such as the number, radius and location of pores, the coordination number, as well as the radius and length of the throats are used herein as the optimization parameters. The difference between the binary SEM images and virtual sections on the generated network in conjunction with the permeability and mean pore size data were selected as the objective function.... 

Gravity Drainage and Capillary Imbibition are among the most important mechanisms in oil production from carbonate fractured reservoirs. In order to investigate the feasibility and effects of these mechanisms in oil recovery from carbonate cores, some different experiments were carried out at Sharif University Laboratories. Carbonate cores were taken away from the well-known Asmari outcrop, Asmari Mountain in south east of M.I.S. city and used in these experiments. Oil and gas samples were collected from field separators and recombined to reservoir composition. The Gas-Oil ratio was adjusted to obtain the reservoir fluid properties. A core flooding apparatus with various capabilities was... 

Due to the fact that, over 60% of oil reserves are located in fractured reservoirs, this type of reservoirs requires a great deal of attention. The presence of the fractures in porous media results in many complexities in the liquid path and production, consequently, simulation and modeling of flow equations is highly important. In order to achieve a more profound understanding of liquid flow in gravity drainage mechanism, the concept of capillary tubes is initially used. By using the capillary tube concept, at first, the gravity drainage mechanism is investigated in the first block in a stack of blocks and an analytical solution is presented for this case. Then, the stack of blocks is... 

Enhancing oil production from fractured reservoirs is challenging. The flow characteristics observed in naturally fractured reservoirs are complicated due to interaction between the two different flow domains: fracture and matrix. Spontaneous imbibition is one of the most important recovery processes in water-wet fractured reservoirs. Oil cannot be spontaneously produced from oil-wet rocks, unless the capillary pressure barrier between fracture conduits and matrix is overcome. The flow characteristics in fractured systems thus relate to the wettability of the rocks. Low salinity water injection has been widely studied as a method of enhancing oil recovery in recent years. However, its impact... 

Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) techniques have become of the main priorities of the oil industry during the high oil price era. It is interesting to note that the common method to increase production from reservoirs is the water injection method, which recovers a very low amount of oil from the oil-wet matrices due to the lack of water imbibition. Previous studies have shown that changing the wettability of rock would critically increase the oil recovery efficiency. This could be achieved by the low-salinity water injection method. In recent years, extensive studies have been conducted on this technique to evaluate its effectiveness for various types of oil reservoirs. Simultaneous injection...