The Impact of Mineral Dissolution on Multiphase Flow in Permeable Carbonates

Abstract:

Carbon dioxide injection into deep saline aquifers is governed by a number of physicochemical processes at a broad range of spatial scales including mineral dissolution and precipitation, fluid flow, and capillary trapping. Past efforts have mostly focused on measuring the multiphase flow properties, capillarity, relative permeability, and residual trapping. However, the impact of fluid-rock interaction on these properties is less well understood. In this work we have made a series of measurements characterizing the impact of rock mineral dissolution on multiphase flow in three carbonate rocks.

We used core flooding techniques to mimic reactive conditions representative of the near the well bore and far field regions of a carbonate reservoir CO₂ injection project. Tests sequentially induced mineral dissolution and characterized the impacts on multiphase flow properties. Temperature retarded acid was used to uniformly dissolve calcite in Ketton, Estaillades, and Edward Brown rock cores. A single dissolution stages removed approximately 0.5% of the mass of the rocks and measurements of relative permeability and residual trapping were made after each stage along with mercury injection capillary pressure (MICP) to quantify the variation of in the pore size distribution. Three Stages were performed on each of carbonates rocks. Imaging with x-ray micro-CT and medical CT were used to quantify the porosity variation and observe the changes in pore structure and multiphase flow properties at scales from the um to the cm.

The pore size distribution of the rocks was observed to both increase and become less uniform with progressive dissolution, as shown in Figure 1. For Ketton, the micro-pores, with size range from 0.01 um to 0.1um, have less been involved in the reaction than the macro-pores (10 um to 100 um). A larger spread in capillary trapping was seen around a characteristic initial-residual curve. Relative permeability changes with progressive dissolution was not well described by correlations to changes in porosity alone (increasing from 0.2187 to 0.2303).