An Experimental Investigation of Mass Transfer in Tight Dual-Porosity Systems

During gas injection in ultra-tight fractured reservoirs, molecular diffusion can play a dominant role in the mass transfer process and enhance recovery by extracting oil components from matrix and delaying gas breakthrough. There has been a growing interest from scholars and operators to study the effect of diffusive mass transfer on the potential incremental recovery from CO2 and rich gas injection. However, many fundamental questions pertaining to the physics of multicomponent multiphase flow and transport are still left unanswered. This paper aims to improve the understanding of multicomponent diffusive mass transfer between matrix and fracture blocks through experimental and modeling work. Displacement experiments were carried out using analog fluids and mesoporous medium to effectively isolate and study the relevant physical mechanisms at play. The experiments were performed in packed columns utilizing silica-gel particles that have internal porosity. The particle size is 40-70 micron with highly controlled internal pore size of 6 nm that makes up approximately 50% of the overall porosity. The quaternary analog fluids system consists of Water, Methanol, Isopropanol, and Isooctane, was used because it mimics the phase behavior of CO2, Methane, Butane and Dodecane mixtures at 2,280 psi and 100°C. Our selection of the analog fluid system and porous medium allowed us to investigate matrix-fracture fluid exchange as observed during an enhanced recovery operation in an ultra-tight fractured system. The effluents from these displacement experiments served as the basis for our analysis of diffusive mass transfer. The role of molecular diffusion in the displacement experiments was investigated by first performing separate diffusion experiments to obtain diffusion coefficients for all relevant binary mixtures. Infinite dilution diffusion coefficients were measured for all binary mixtures and then used to model binary and multicomponent diffusion coefficients over the whole composition range. The accuracy of this approach was determined by performing additional binary diffusion experiments over a broader range of compositions. The displacement experiments were simulated using an in-house simulator and excellent agreement was obtained: The extensive experimental/modeling work related to the diffusion coefficients of the analog fluid system was used in interpreting the diffusive mass transfer between the matrix (stagnant) and fracture (flowing) domains via a 1D linear model. The presented work provides new insights into the role of diffusive mass transfer in ultra-tight fractured systems and builds a framework to highlight the critical data needed to effectively characterize and simulate recovery from such complex geological settings.