Residual Trapping of CO2 in an Oil-Filled, Oil-Wet Sandstone Core: Results of Three-Phase Pore-Scale Imaging

Stefan Iglauer*, Adriana Paluszny, Taufiq Rahman, Yihuai Zhang, Wolfgang Wülling, Maxim Lebedev

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

66 Citations (Scopus)
44 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

CO2 geosequestration in oil reservoirs is an economically attractive solution as it can be combined with enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR). However, the effectiveness of the associated three-phase displacement processes has not been tested at the micrometer pore scale, which determines the overall reservoir-scale fluid dynamics and thus CO2-EOR project success. We thus imaged such displacement processes in situ in 3-D with X-ray microcomputed tomography at high resolution at reservoir conditions and found that oil extraction was enhanced substantially, while a significant residual CO2 saturation (13.5%) could be achieved in oil-wet rock. Statistics of the residual CO2 and oil clusters are also provided; they are similar to what is found in analogue two-phase systems although some details are different, and displacement processes are significantly more complex.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)11146-11154
Number of pages9
JournalGeophysical Research Letters
Volume46
Issue number20
Early online date19 Aug 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 28 Oct 2019

Keywords

  • CO-geosequestration
  • oil reservoir
  • pore-scale flow
  • residual trapping
  • three-phase flow
  • x-ray microtomography

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Geophysics
  • General Earth and Planetary Sciences

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