Simulating gas-water relative permeabilities for nanoscale porous media with interfacial effects

Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical method to simulate gas-water relative permeability for nanoscale porous media utilizing fractal theory. The comparison between the calculation results and experimental data was performed to validate the present model. The result shows that the gas-water relative permeability would be underestimated significantly without interfacial effects. The thinner the liquid film thickness, the greater the liquid-phase relative permeability. In addition, both liquid surface diffusion and gas diffusion coefficient can promote gas-liquid two-phase flow. Increase of liquid surface diffusion prefer to increase liquid-phase permeability obviously as similar as increase of gas diffusion coefficient to increase gas-phase permeability. Moreover, the pore structure will become complicated with the increase of fractal dimension, which would reduce the gas-water relative permeability. This study has provided new insights for development of gas reservoirs with nanoscale pores such as shale.

Keywords

• relative permeability
• nanoscale pores
• interfacial effects
• shale gas
• fractal
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