Two-phase flow through orthogonal composite cores with wettability heterogeneity

The objective of this study is to perform and interpret oil-brine displacements in composite cores made up of sandstone blocks of the same permeability but opposite wettability. The experimental procedure consists of cutting cubic segments from a homogeneous water-wet sandstone core, one block out of two being silanated to become oil-wet. The composite cores were constructed by rearranging the blocks together. The waterflooding experiments are interpreted using the large-scale averaging method (Quintard and Whitaker, 1988). Large-scale petrophysical properties (relative permeabilities and capillary pressure) were computed from the local-scale properties measured on isolated samples. A 1D numerical simulation is then performed, using the large-scale properties, and results are compared to the experimental data.