A new unsteady-state method of determining two-phase relative permeability illustrated by CO2-brine primary drainage in Berea sandstone

This study presents a new unsteady-state method for measuring two-phase relative permeability by obtaining local values of the three key parameters (saturation, pressure drop, and phase flux) versus time during a displacement. These three parameters can be substituted to two-phase Darcy Buckingham equation to directly determine relative permeability. To obtain the first two, we use a medical X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) scanner to monitor saturation in time and space, and six differential pressure transducers to measure the overall pressure drop and the pressure drops of five individual sections (divided by four pressure taps on the core) continuously. At each scanning time, the local phase flux is obtained by spatially integrating the saturation profile and converting this to the flux using a fractional flow framework. One advantage of this local method over most previous methods is that the capillary end effect is experimentally avoided; this improvement is crucial for experiments using low viscosity fluids such as supercritical and gas phases. To illustrate the new method, we conduct five CO2-brine primary drainage experiments in a 60.8 cm long and 116 mD Berea sandstone core at 20 degrees C and 1500 psi. In return, we obtain hundreds of unsteady-state CO2 and brine relative permeability data points that are consistent with steady-state relative permeability data from the same experiments. Due to the large amount of relative permeability data obtained by the new unsteady-state method, the uncertainties of the exponents in the Corey-type fits decrease by up to 90% compared with the steady-state method. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.