Transport in Porous Media, Vol.63, No.2, 289-304, 2006
Immiscible displacement in the interacting capillary bundle model part II. Applications of model and comparison of interacting and non-interacting capillary bundle models
In the first part of this work (Dong et al., Transport Porous Media, 59, 1-18, 2005), an interacting capillary bundle model was developed for analysing immiscible displacement processes in porous media. In this paper, the second part of the work, the model is applied to analyse the fluid dynamics of immiscible displacements. The analysis includes: (1) free spontaneous imbibition, (2) the effects of injection rate and oil-water viscosity ratio on the displacement interface profile, and (3) the effect of oil-water viscosity ratio on the relative permeability curves. Analysis of a non-interacting tube bundle model is also presented for comparison. Because pressure equilibration between the capillaries is stipulated in the interacting capillary model, it is able to reproduce the behaviour of immiscible displacement observed in porous media which cannot be modelled by using non-interacting tube bundle models.
Keywords:immiscible displacement;capillary bundle model;capillary pressure;saturation profiles;relative permeability;viscosity ratio