Qualitative and quantitative analysis of three-phase distributions of oil, water and gas in Bentheimer sandstone using micro-CT imaging

It is now widely acknowledged that continuous oil spreading films observed in two-dimensional glass micro-model studies for strongly water wet three-phase oil, water and gas systems are also present in real porous media and result in lower tertiary gas flood residual oil saturations than for corresponding negative spreading systems which do not display oil spreading behavior. However, it has not been possible to directly confirm the presence of spreading films in real porous media in threedimensions and little is understood of the distribution of the phases within the complex geometry and topology of actual porous media for different spreading conditions. This paper describes a preliminary study using high resolution X-ray microtomography to image the distribution of oil, water and gas after tertiary gas flooding to recover waterflood residual oil for two set of fluids, one positive spreading and the other negative spreading, for strongly water wet conditions in Bentheimer sandstone. We show that for strongly water-wet conditions and a positive spreading system the oil phase remains connected throughout the pore space and results in a low tertiary gas flood residual oil saturation. The residual oil saturation for the corresponding negative spreading system is significantly higher and this is shown to be related to the absence of oil films in this system. The presence of films for positive spreading systems and the absence of such films for negative spreading systems is further confirmed by the computation of the Eurler characteristic for each phase.