Micro-tomography of oil recovery dynamics at a pore scale

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Crude oil production from reservoirs involves multiphase flow in porous media. Recent rapid development in micro-focused X-ray CT scanners allows us to visualize and observe the migration of the interfaces between phases at a pore scale. In this study, we visualize two-phase flows of oil and water which is governed by the capillarity and wettability at a pore scale resolution. First the snap-off process that disconnects oil blobs from the continuum to be trapped in a porous medium by capillarity and reduces oil recovery. Next the flow field around the trapped oil blobs is visualized. Water is flowing even at the pores just proximate to trapped oil blobs. However, the stagnant water films which thickness is lower than the pore scale separate oil blob and flowing water. We developed a numerical simulation code of two phase flow in porous media based on the lattice Boltzmann method. Numerical simulations were carried out for porous structures which were obtained by X-ray CT.