Elastic waves in porous media saturated with non-wetting fluid

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 315
Author(s):  
Jimmy X. Li ◽  
Reza Rezaee ◽  
Tobias M. Müller ◽  
Mohammad Sarmadivaleh

Elastic waves have widely been used as a non-destructive probing method in oilfield exploration and development, and the most well-known applications are in seismic exploration and borehole sonic logging. For waves in porous media, it is popular to use the Biot theory, which incorporates the wave-induced global flow, accounting for the frictional attenuation. The Biot theory assumes that the fluid is wetting to the solid matrix. However, the fluid is not always wetting the rock in real reservoirs. It was previously revealed that a non-wetting fluid parcel tends to slip on the solid wall pore boundary where the intermolecular potential between the fluid and solid wall is weaker than in wetting fluid conditions. This particular slippage feature means that the coupling relationship between the fluid and solid frame and frictional dissipation is likely to be very different between non-wetting and wetting fluid situations. We characterise this wave-induced slippage using an apparent viscosity for the non-wetting fluid within the thin viscous boundary layer. This apparent viscosity is smaller than the viscosity of the bulk fluid. We demonstrate that the slip correction affects the dynamic permeability and dynamic tortuosity and results in slippage/wettability dependent phase velocities and attenuation of the fully fluid-saturated rock.

Geophysics ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. WA65-WA76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Jakobsen ◽  
Mark Chapman

Approximations for frequency-dependent and complex-valued effective stiffness tensors of cracked porous media (saturated with a single fluid) are developed on the basis of an inclusion-based model (the T-matrix approach to rock physics) and a unified treatment of the global-flow and squirt-flow mechanisms. Essentially, this study corrects an inconsistency or error related to fluid-mass conservation in an existing expression for the t-matrix (wave-induced deformation) of a communicating cavity, a cavity that is isolated with respect to stress propagation (through the solid matrix) but that can exchange fluid mass with other cavities because of global and/or local pressure gradients associated with passage of a long viscoelastic wave. An earlier demonstration of Gassmann consistency remains valid because the new theory of global flow and squirt flow (which also takes into account solid mechanical effects of stress interaction by us-ing products of communicating t-matrices associated with two-point correlation functions of ellipsoidal symmetry) only differs from an earlier version by a correction term that goes to zero in the low-frequency limit. If the unified model is applied to the special case of a model involving a single set of spheroidal cavities (having the same aspect ratio and orientation), the results become identical with those obtained using a special theory of global flow that predicts that at zero frequency the cavities will behave as though they are isolated with respect to wave-induced fluid flow (in accordance with Gassmann’s formulas) and that at high frequencies, they will behave as though they are dry. Our theory predicts that there will be a continuous transition from a global-flow-dominated system (characterized by a negative velocity dispersion) to a squirt-flow-dominated system (characterized by a positive velocity dispersion) if one begins with a single set of cavities and then introduces a distribution of shapes and/or orientations that gradually becomes wider (more realistic).


2002 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
K.L. Williams ◽  
D.R. Jackson ◽  
E.I. Thorsos ◽  
Dajun Tang ◽  
S.G. Schock

2010 ◽  
Vol 133 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amit Halder ◽  
Ashish Dhall ◽  
Ashim K. Datta

Fundamental, physics-based modeling of complex food processes is still in the developmental stages. This lack of development can be attributed to complexities in both the material and transport processes. Society has a critical need for automating food processes (both in industry and at home) while improving quality and making food safe. Product, process, and equipment designs in food manufacturing require a more detailed understanding of food processes that is possible only through physics-based modeling. The objectives of this paper are (1) to develop a general multicomponent and multiphase modeling framework that can be used for different thermal food processes and can be implemented in commercially available software (for wider use) and (2) to apply the model to the simulation of deep-fat frying and hamburger cooking processes and validate the results. Treating food material as a porous medium, heat and mass transfer inside such material during its thermal processing is described using equations for mass and energy conservation that include binary diffusion, capillary and convective modes of transport, and physicochemical changes in the solid matrix that include phase changes such as melting of fat and water and evaporation/condensation of water. Evaporation/condensation is considered to be distributed throughout the domain and is described by a novel nonequilibrium formulation whose parameters have been discussed in detail. Two complex food processes, deep-fat frying and contact heating of a hamburger patty, representing a large group of common food thermal processes with similar physics have been implemented using the modeling framework. The predictions are validated with experimental results from the literature. As the food (a porous hygroscopic material) is heated from the surface, a zone of evaporation moves from the surface to the interior. Mass transfer due to the pressure gradient (from evaporation) is significant. As temperature rises, the properties of the solid matrix change and the phases of frozen water and fat become transportable, thus affecting the transport processes significantly. Because the modeling framework is general and formulated in a manner that makes it implementable in commercial software, it can be very useful in computer-aided food manufacturing. Beyond its immediate applicability in food processing, such a comprehensive model can be useful in medicine (for thermal therapies such as laser surgery), soil remediation, nuclear waste treatment, and other fields where heat and mass transfer takes place in porous media with significant evaporation and other phase changes.


SPE Journal ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (01) ◽  
pp. 01-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omid Mohammadzadeh ◽  
Shawn David Taylor ◽  
Dmitry Eskin ◽  
John Ratulowski

Summary One of the complex processes of permeability impairment in porous media, especially in the near-wellbore region, is asphaltene-induced formation damage. During production, asphaltene particles precipitate out of the bulk fluid phase because of pressure drop, which might result in permeability reduction caused by both deposition of asphaltene nanoparticles on porous-medium surfaces and clogging of pore throats by larger asphaltene agglomerates. Experimental data will be used to identify the parameters of an impairment model being developed. As part of a larger effort to identify key mechanisms of asphaltene deposition in porous media and develop a model for asphaltene impairment by pressure depletion, this paper focuses on a systematic design and execution of an experimental study of asphaltene-related permeability damage caused by live-oil depressurization along the length of a flow system. An experiment was performed using a custom-designed 60-ft slimtube-coil assembly packed with silica sands to a permeability of 55 md. The customized design included a number of pressure gauges at regular intervals along the coil length, which enabled real-time measurement of the fluid-pressure profile across the full length of the slimtube coil. The test was performed on a well-characterized recombined live oil from the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) that is a known problematic asphaltenic oil. Under a constant differential pressure, the injection flow rate of the live oil through the slimtube coil decreased over time as the porous medium became impaired. During the impairment stage, samples of the produced oil were collected on a regular basis for asphaltene-content measurement. After more than 1 month, the impairment test was terminated; the live oil was purged from the slimtube coil with helium at a pressure above the asphaltene-onset pressure (AOP); and the entire system was gently depressurized to bring the coil to atmospheric conditions while preserving the asphaltene-damaged zones of the coil. The permeability and porosity of the porous medium changed because of asphaltene impairment that was triggered by pressure depletion. Results indicated that the coil permeability was impaired by approximately 32% because of pressure depletion below the AOP, with most of the damage occurring in the latter section of the tube, which operated entirely below the AOP. Post-analytical studies indicated lower asphaltene content of the produced-oil samples compared with the injecting fluid. The distribution of asphaltene deposits along the length of the coil was determined by cutting the slimtube coil into 2- to 3-ft-long sections and using solvent extraction to collect the asphaltenes in each section. The extraction results confirmed that the observed permeability impairment was indeed caused by asphaltene deposition in the middle and latter sections of the coil, where the pressure was less than the AOP. With the success of this experiment, the same detailed analysis can be extended to a series of experiments to determine the effects of different key parameters on pressure-induced asphaltene impairment, including flow rate, wettability, and permeability.


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