RESEARCH ARTICLE


Theoretical Study of Water Saturation with Percolation Mechanics Method



Z. B. Liu1, H. H. Liu*, 2, X. F. Ding3
1 School of Graduate, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, China;
2 School of Petroleum Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, China; 3School of Science, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, China

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2012
Volume: 5
First Page: 21
Last Page: 25
Publisher Id: TOPEJ-5-21
DOI: 10.2174/1874834101205010021

Article History:

Received Date: 13/12/2011
Revision Received Date: 10/4/2012
Acceptance Date: 10/4/2012
Electronic publication date: 11/5/2012
Collection year: 2012

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© 2012 B. Liu et al.;

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Correspondence: * Address correspondence to this author at the School of Petroleum Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, China; Tel: +0086-028-83032760; E-mail:Tsinghua616@163.com


Abstract

Theoretical study of water saturation in oil-water fluid flow area is meaningful to the high, stabilized production and the improvement of ultimate recovery. At present, there is no theoretical description of water saturation in the oil and water seepage process. Combining relational expression between relative permeability and water saturation with the fractional flow equation produces an expression of water cut changed by water saturation; Introducing Taylor expansion and Vieta's theorem to the differentiation of water cut gives a theoretical expression of water saturation in oilwater fluid flow area; Possibility of continuity of the water saturation is also discussed. Applying this formula to certain sandstone reservoir in China achieves good results: In oil-water seepage process, water saturation is continuous in certain interval and the values of it are double in another interval; the oil recovery can be re-calculated and improved with this new equation. This new water saturation equation lays a base for the study of residual oil mobility and enhanced oil recovery.

Keywords: Relative permeability, water saturation, percolation mechanics, Buckley-Leverett equation, Vieta's Theorem.