InterPore Academy Recorded Short Course
Lecturer: Martin Blunt
Title: Multiphase Flow in Permeable Media: A Pore-Scale Perspective
To access the Short Course, please register here.
Course registration for recorded short course:
Interpore members 50€ students, 75€ academic, 150€ industry
Interpore non-members 62.50€ students, 80€ academic, 150€ industry
Please note that course access links and materials will be sent via email once payment is received. Links to watch the courses will be activated for you for 60 days. If you have paid for this course and have not received this information within 1-2 business days, please contact margaret.dieter@interpore.org.
Martin Blunt, Imperial College London, UK
Martin Blunt joined Imperial College London in June 1999 as a Professor of Petroleum Engineering. He served as Head of the Department of Earth Science and Engineering from 2006-2011. Previous to this he was Associate Professor of Petroleum Engineering at Stanford University in California. Before joining Stanford in 1992, he was a research reservoir engineer with BP in Sunbury-on-Thames. He holds MA and PhD (1988) degrees in theoretical physics from Cambridge University.
Over the last five years, Prof. Blunt and his research team have pioneered the use of X-ray micro-tomography to image rocks and fluid displacement within them. Displacement processes at reservoir conditions of high temperature and pressure can be imaged at micron spatial resolution over time periods of an hour to a few seconds, using a combination of laboratory and synchrotron-based instruments. The work has allowed reservoir wettability to be evaluated at the pore scale, quantified the degree of capillary trapping during CO2 storage, uncovered the dynamic nature of displacement, even at low flow rates, and discovered new flow patterns during dissolution. This research has been complemented by an array of pore-scale modelling techniques that are able to reproduce the behaviour seen experimentally. This work has helped establish the so-called discipline of “digital rock analysis” that combines pore-scale imaging, modelling and analysis to understand and predict displacement processes in porous media. As well as commercial applications on the oil & gas industry, for both conventional and unconventional reservoirs, the work has been used to help design subsurface carbon dioxide storage and contaminant clean-up.
Course Abstract:
This course will provide an overview of pore-scale imaging, analysis and modelling with an emphasis on how the fundamentals inform practical applications. The course will allow scientists and engineers to make the best use of the latest developments in imaging and modelling, and to apply the results intelligently to predict and interpret field-scale recovery, storage and transport processes.
The course will start with a review of the basic physical laws governing flow and transport at the small scale. Then the latest developments in imaging and modelling technology will be reviewed. The emphasis will then be on multiphase flow properties – capillary pressure and relative permeability. Attendees will understand how to use these quantities for the design and interpretation of field-scale processes.
The course will not only introduce so-called digital rock physics, but will educate participants in the deeper and richer appreciation of multiphase flow properties and their impact at the macroscale enabled by new imaging and modelling technology.
Learning Objectives:
The material in the lectures below will be supplemented by pre-recorded teaching material and with reading from chapters of my book “Multiphase Flow in Permeable Media: a Pore-Scale Perspective”
There are 12 hours of formal lectures and examples during the class over four days with 12 hours of pre-recoded material, making the course total of 24 hours.
Lecture outline
Lecture 1 (3 hrs)
1. Motivation
2. Young equation and contact angle
3. Contact angle and wettability
4. Porous media and networks
5. Displacement processes and primary drainage
Lecture 2 (3 hrs)
6. Leverett J-function
7. Imbibition
8. Trapping and the effects of wettability
9. Oil layers
Lecture 3 (3 hrs)
10. Fluid flow and relative permeability
11. Navier Stokes equation
12. Darcy’s law
13. Pore size and permeability
14. Relative permeability
Lecture 4 (3 hrs)
15. Effect of wettability on relative permeability
16. Waterflooding and spontaneous imbibition
17. The trillion-barrel question
18. Minimal surfaces and maximal oil recovery
19. Research presentation