Spontaneous counter-current imbibition in porous media

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Recovery of petroleum from fractured reservoirs relies heavily on water being imbibed into the rock matrix, thereby displacing oil into the fractures. However, this imbibition process is very poorly understood, even in a very fundametal sense. The proposed work will comprise a series of experiments to explore the nature of the imbibition process, specifically to determine to what degree this process is self-similar, and to determine the boundary condition that exists between the fracture and the rock matrix. The results of this work will have a major impact on how these processes are modelled in reservoir simulators, and in turn, how production from fractured reservoirs can be optimized. The results will also form the basis of a new method for determining relative permeability and capillary pressure curves based on spontaneous, counter-current imbibition experiments.