Investigation of the relative permeabilities in two-phase flow of heavy oil/water and three-phase flow of heavy oil/water/gas systems

Abstract An experimental study was conducted to investigate two-phase and three-phase relative permeability behavior in a multi-phase flow, which involved a typical Canadian bitumen. A series of isothermal core flood experiments were conducted on an unconsolidated core composed of cleaned Athabasca sand matrix and relative permeabilities of the involved phases were determined. Drainage and imbibition processes for two-phase water/oil flow and oil saturation reversal in a three-phase oil/water/gas flow, which is encountered in a typical air injection process were examined. A history matching technique was used to determine relative permeabilities for two-phase water/oil and gas/liquid systems. A strong hysteresis was observed in both wetting phase and nonwetting phase relative permeabilities. The endpoint relative permeability of oil was higher than the end-point relative permeability of water by two orders of magnitude in two-phase water/oil experiments. Similar end-point relative permeability ratio was observed in two-phase liquid/gas experiments. Using the determined relative permeabilities for two-phase flows, Stone's first and second model and Baker's interpolation model were used to predict the fluid production in the three-phase flow. Despite showing a satisfactory prediction for liquid production, all models showed a significant deviation for produced gas at the early stages of the three-phase flow experiment.