LI Xianbing; LIU Li and ZHU Bin
, 2004, 31(7): 984-0.
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Water-oil relative permeability, related to all two-phase flow properties, characterizes two-phase flow and displacement pro-cesses in porous media. The relative permeability is inherently complicated, and its tunctional form is difticult to be determined in aparticular reservoir study. The adding of various chemical agents intothe displacing aqueous phase during alkaline-surfactant-polymer combination chemical flooding significantly changes interfacial tension (σ)of water-oil interfaces, and also increases the degree of difticulty in measuring such changes in the laboratory. To overcome the limitations of the existing laboratory measurements of relative permeability, which are applicable only for high ranges of interfacial tension (e.g.,σ> 10-2 mNlm), a comprehensive experiment of two- phase relative-permeability functions in much lower, realistic inter-facial tension water-oil systems is presented, including an improved steady-state method of measuring water-oil relative permeability curves; a critical interfacial tension value σc (or the critical capillarynumber Nc1 and Nc2)exists such that interfacial tension has littleimpact on relative permeability for σ>σc1,while if 6<6c? relative permeability to both water and oil phases will increase with decreas-ing interfacial tension; a logarithmic relation exists between water-oil two-phase relative permeability and interfacial tensions. The ex-periment and proposed conceptual models should be useful for feasi-bility studies, optimal designs, and numerical simulations of differ-ent chemical flooding operations in oil reservoirs.