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Quantifying solute spreading and mixing in reservoir rocks using 3-D PET imaging

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2016

Ronny Pini ,
Nicholas T. Vandehey ,
Jennifer Druhan ,
James P. O’Neil  and
Sally M. Benson
Ronny Pini*
Affiliation:
Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK
Nicholas T. Vandehey
Affiliation:
Department of Radiotracer Development and Imaging Technology, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Jennifer Druhan
Affiliation:
Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
James P. O’Neil
Affiliation:
Department of Radiotracer Development and Imaging Technology, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Sally M. Benson
Affiliation:
Department of Energy Resources Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: [email protected]
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Abstract

We report results of an experimental investigation into the effects of small-scale (mm–cm) heterogeneities on solute spreading and mixing in a Berea sandstone core. Pulse-tracer tests have been carried out in the Péclet number regime $Pe=6{-}40$ and are supplemented by a unique combination of two imaging techniques. X-ray computed tomography (CT) is used to quantify subcore-scale heterogeneities in terms of permeability contrasts at a spatial resolution of approximately $10~\text{mm}^{3}$, while [11C] positron emission tomography (PET) is applied to image the spatial and temporal evolution of the full tracer plume non-invasively. To account for both advective spreading and local (Fickian) mixing as driving mechanisms for solute transport, a streamtube model is applied that is based on the one-dimensional advection–dispersion equation. We refer to our modelling approach as semideterministic, because the spatial arrangement of the streamtubes and the corresponding solute travel times are known from the measured rock’s permeability map, which required only small adjustments to match the measured tracer breakthrough curve. The model reproduces the three-dimensional PET measurements accurately by capturing the larger-scale tracer plume deformation as well as subcore-scale mixing, while confirming negligible transverse dispersion over the scale of the experiment. We suggest that the obtained longitudinal dispersivity ($0.10\pm 0.02$  cm) is rock rather than sample specific, because of the ability of the model to decouple subcore-scale permeability heterogeneity effects from those of local dispersion. As such, the approach presented here proves to be very valuable, if not necessary, in the context of reservoir core analyses, because rock samples can rarely be regarded as ‘uniformly heterogeneous’.

JFM classification

Convection: Convection in porous media Low-Reynolds-number flows: Porous media
Type
Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 796 , 10 June 2016 , pp. 558 - 587
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Copyright
© 2016 Cambridge University Press 

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Footnotes

‡

Present address: Department of Geology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820, USA.

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