Development of new wettability measurement methods and comparison with established methods

Abstract

Wettability is one of the important rock-fluid properties, where a misinterpretation of its nature may lead to potential low recovery from the reservoir and hence a severe economic loss. Wettability is defined as the tendency of one fluid to spread or adhere to a solid surface in the presence of other immiscible liquids. In a reservoir system, three main fluid types are likely to coexist; oil, gas, and brine. The saturation history and the migration sequence of the reservoir fluids play a significant role in wettability. The importance of wettability lies within influencing many other reservoir properties, such as capillary pressure, relative permeability relationships, water flood behavior, and EOR efficiency, electric properties, simulated tertiary recovery, dispersion of tracers, and irreducible water and oil saturations. There are many established methods to measure wettability both qualitatively and quantitatively. However all these methods have some drawbacks. The most reliable quantitative methods are generally very time consuming and need high level of expertise along with costly equipment. The qualitative methods that are generally used for wettability studies have low repeatability and reproducibility. In this thesis project, we are targeting to establish two rock wettability methods namely Particle Floatation Method and Capillary rise method. The methods will be easy to perform, reliable and would not require sophisticated/costly equipment. The developed experiments showed promising results in correlation with Amott Harvey experimental results.

Date of Award	Dec 2021
Original language	American English