SPE-195859-MS

The Effect of Temperature on Two-Phase Oil/Water Relative Permeability in

Different Rock/Fluid Systems

Sajjad Esmaeili, Hemanta Sarma, Thomas Harding, and Brij Maini, University of Calgary

Copyright 2019, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition held in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 30 Sep - 2 October 2019.

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Abstract
Two-phase oil/water relative permeability measurements were conducted at ambient and high temperatures
in two different rock-fluid systems; one using a clean Poly-Alpha-Olefin (PAO) oil and the other with
Athabasca bitumen. The tests were performed in a clean sand-pack with the confining pressure of 800 psi,
using deionized water as the aqueous phase. Both the JBN method and the history match approach were
utilized to obtain the relative permeability from the results of isothermal oil displacement tests. The contact
angle and IFT measurements were carried out to assess any possible wettability alteration and change in
fluid/fluid interaction at higher temperatures.
Results, Observations, Conclusions: The results of the clean system using the viscous PAO oil confirmed
that the two-phase oil/water relative permeability in this ultra-clean system is practically insensitive to
the temperature. The slight variation in oil endpoint relative permeability, especially at ambient condition,
was attributed to variations in the packing of sand. It was found that the history matching derived two-
phase relative permeability from the highest temperature test provides reasonably good history matches of
the other displacements that were conducted at lower temperatures. In addition, it is shown that the JBN
approach based relative permeability curves show larger variations, primarily due to insufficient volume of
water injection at lower temperatures, which makes the practical residual oil saturation much higher than
the true residual. In contrast with the ultra-clean system, the results obtained with bitumen showed much
larger variations in relative permeability with temperature.
Most of the reported studies involving history matching approach treat the low-temperature
measurements as the base case and show that changes in relative permeability are needed to history-match
the tests at higher temperatures. We have shown that the displacement done at the highest temperature
provides a more reliable estimate of the relative permeability and, in some cases, this relative permeability
can successfully history match tests done at lower temperatures. In view of the impracticality of injecting
sufficient water to reach close to real residual oil saturation at low temperatures, it would be better to obtain
relative permeability data at high temperatures for characterizing the two-phase flow behavior of viscous
oil systems.
2 SPE-195859-MS

Introduction
The Thermal Enhanced Oil Recovery (TEOR) techniques such as CSS (Cyclic Steam Stimulation), steam
injection, in-situ combustion, and Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) are commonly employed
for production of heavy oil and bitumen. The SAGD process is the most applicable TEOR technique in
Canada for oil recovery from bitumen reservoirs [1]. The high-temperature condition existing in any TEOR
technique causes a large reduction of oil viscosity (four to five orders of magnitude in bitumen systems
and two to three orders of magnitude in heavy oil systems), substantial density reduction, and modification
of fluid/fluid and rock/fluid interactions. Consequently, the oil/water relative permeability can change due
to the variation of wettability and interfacial tension (IFT); therefore, the two-phase flow behavior can
be different at high temperature [2]. The relative permeability plays a paramount role in two-phase flow
behavior and it controls the pressure drop, the shape of the displacement front, oil production rate, and
final oil recovery. However, the measurement of this important parameter under high-temperature and high-
pressure conditions has its own challenges, especially for highly viscous heavy oil and bitumen systems [2].
Since the mid-1950s, scholars have studied the effect of temperature on relative permeability. The steady-
state relative permeability measurements done by Wilson [3] using kerosene at 32º C and 71 °C indicated that
this parameter did not change with temperature. Edmondson [4] employed two crude oils and three mineral
oils in fired consolidated Berea sandstone cores to measure this parameter at the temperature up to 260 °C by
applying the unsteady state approach. His results showed that the residual oil saturation decreased; however,
the water/oil relative permeability increased at low water saturations and declined at high water saturations,
which was attributed to the impact of IFT and viscosity ratio changes on the relative permeability [4]. A
refined oil was used by Davidson [5] in 1969, in a clean sand-pack in the temperature range of 22-282 °C.
The results of an explicit technique (welge method [6]) for analyzing the production data demonstrated that
the oil entrapment reduced at high temperatures. Davidson [5] also discussed the viscosity reduction due
to the dissolution of water phase into the oil phase as a significant factor in his measurements. An increase
in oil relative permeability and the decrease in water relative permeability with increasing temperature
was reported by Sinnokrot et al. [7] in sandstone cores at the temperatures up to 163 °C. Furthermore, the
irreducible water saturation and residual oil saturation were shown to linearly increase and non-linearly
decrease at elevated temperatures in this system, respectively [7]. The IFT and contact angle measurements
conducted by Poston et al. [8] proved that these two parameters decreased as temperature was raised from
21 to 79 °C, consistent with Sinnokrot et al. [7] results, which led the irreducible water and residual oil
saturation to increase and decrease, respectively. Other researchers [9-11] argued about the implementation
of the material balance and the selected criteria for such tests. Lo & Mungan [12] and Weinbrandt [13]
observed results consistent with Poston et al. [8] and Sinnokrot et al. [7], confirming a reduction of the water
relative permeability and residual oil saturation along with the slight increase in oil relative permeability and
irreducible water saturation. Note that all of these researchers [8, 13] used clean porous medium and light
oils. The variation of relative permeability with temperature was also reported by Abasov et al. [14] in 1976
in a preserved consolidated core. Sufi et al. [15] conducted displacement experiments in an unconsolidated
sand/light mineral oil system at 21-86 °C and calculated the relative permeability with JR [16] method.
They concluded that the relative permeability curve and real residual oil saturation were independent of
temperature even though the practical residual oil saturation might be changed [15]. The unstabilized fluid
flow and the lack of attention to the rock/fluid interaction have been discussed by Miller and Ramey [17] and
Nakornthap and Evans [18] as the shortcomings of this study. Torabzadeh et al. [19] performed extensive
experimental tests to investigate the effect of temperature on relative permeability in low IFT and high IFT
systems using Berea sandstones and n-dodecane over a wide range of temperature. The residual oil saturation
slightly decreased and oil relative permeability increased in both systems at higher temperatures, while the
irreducible water saturation and water relative permeability showed different trends in these systems. Some
useful empirical correlations were obtained by Kumar et al. [20] based on Torabzadeh et al. results [19].
SPE-195859-MS 3

Maini & Batycky [21] used a viscous crude oil (16,400 cP at 22 °C) in their relative permeability
measurements in preserved sand cores over a wide range of temperature (21-272 °C). They calculated
relative permeability using a history matching technique. The results, surprisingly, showed that this system
tended to be more oil-wet at higher temperatures. The oil relative permeability decreased at higher
temperatures, while the water relative permeability was insensitive to the temperature and the residual oil
saturation reached a minimum value around 160 °C and then increased [21]. Another study reported by
Maini and Okazawa [22], using a heavy oil and unconsolidated sand found that constant values of irreducible
water saturation and residual oil saturation could be used in history matching at different temperatures
but the water relative permeability increased with temperature and the oil relative permeability showed no
consistent trend. Polikar et al. [23, 24] employed the Athabasca bitumen and unconsolidated silica sand
to assess the effect of temperature on relative permeability curves in a temperature range of 100-250 °C.
No change in relative permeability curves with temperature, including the irreducible water saturation and
residual oil saturation, oil and water exponent and endpoint relative permeability, were reported [23, 24].
Other researchers have endeavored to measure the relative permeability at high-temperature conditions
by applying implicit and explicit approaches in various rock/fluid systems but they did not reach a firm
consensus associated with the effect of temperature [25-29].
In 2006, Bennion et al. [30] analyzed the information of 43 datasets of experimentally measured relative
permeability using heavy and ultra-heavy oil under low- and high-temperature conditions (10-200 °C) and
developed some useful empirical correlations for relative permeability and its characteristics under this
condition. Sedaee Sola et al. [31] investigated the behavior of irreducible water saturation and residual oil
saturation with temperature using medium and heavy oil in carbonate systems. Their results were quite
similar with reported observations in sandstone systems. Although prior to this research, Esfahani et al.
[32] reported an opposite behavior in carbonate rocks. Other researchers, like Hamouda et al. [32-34] and
Ashrafi et al. [9, 10], could not find any consistent trend in relative permeability curve characteristics as a
function of temperature. Ashrafi et al. [9, 10] attributed this to some experimental errors involved in their
experiments. The results of study of Vega et al. [35], using diatomite cores and a light oil was in contrast with
the observations of Li et al. [36] and Cao et al. [37] regarding the oil and water relative permeability curves
at higher temperatures. The more recent studies conducted by Torabi et al. [38] using a moderately viscous
oil, Zhang et al. [39] using a light oil, and Qin et al. [40] using a heavy oil show that the irreducible water
saturation increases and residual oil saturation decreases as temperature is raised in sand-type systems.
Esmaeili et al. [2] conducted a comprehensive review on the effect of temperature on relative permeability
in different rock/fluid systems by considering many factors, such as IFT, wettability, contact angle, viscosity
ratio, and capillary number to reconcile previously reported contradictory results and proposed three likely
reasons for such behavior. Esmaeili et al. [1] developed a robust data-driven model for predicting the relative
permeability, especially for heavy oil systems, at high temperature. Furthermore, they [41] proposed some
useful empirical two-phase oil/water relative permeability correlations for light oil/sand and heavy oil/sand
systems as a function of temperature.
In this study, to clarify the difference of temperature's impact on relative permeability in ultra-clean oil
and viscous crude oil systems, two-phase oil/water relative permeability was measured in clean silica sand-
packs, using PAO-100 (clean synthetic viscous oil) and Athabasca bitumen at varying temperature (23 to
220 °C). A series of isothermal oil displacement experiments were conducted and the results were analyzed
by history match and JBN [42] approaches. Furthermore, the contact angle and IFT were measured to assess
any wettability alteration or fluid/fluid interaction variation with temperature in these systems.
4 SPE-195859-MS

Methodology
Core Flood Setup Details
The experimental setup used in the present study is depicted schematically in Figure 1. The main elements
of the apparatus are: 1) a stainless steel sand-pack holder (capable of applying overburden pressure); 2)
an absolute pressure transducer (to accurately measure the outlet pressure); 3) six differential pressure
transducers; 4) a back pressure regulator; 5) a pressure vessel containing water and compressed nitrogen
(to supply the confining pressure); 6) two transfer vessels (one for oil phase and the other for toluene; 7)
an in-line filter (to filter the heated bitumen prior entering the system); 8) two continuous flow positive
displacement pumps; 9) five thermocouples named TC1 through TC5 (to record the temperature in different
parts of the system); 10) a rod heater and several heating tapes; 11) four temperature controllers; and 12)
an online data acquisition system (to record temperature and pressure every minute). The sand-pack holder
keeps the sand in the annulus space between a rigid stainless steel cylinder and a flexible lead sleeve that is
hydraulically pressurized from inside to compress the sand against the cylindrical wall of the rigid cylinder.
To get a uniform temperature along the sand-pack, a rod heater is installed inside the lead sleeve (along the
axis) and heating tapes are wrapped on the sand-holder wall. An insulation jacket minimizes the heat loss
from the sand-holder. The temperature controllers maintain the temperature at the top, bottom and middle
of the sand-pack as well as inside the sleeve at the desired set-point. It is notable that the oil transfer vessel
is also pre-heated. As shown in Figure 1, there are four Rosemount differential pressure transducers (DP1
to DP4) with the resolution of 0.1 psi in this setup. In addition, one accurate pressure transducer (DP5)
with the resolution of 0.01 inch of water monitors the total pressure drop over the four sections of the sand-
pack, when the pressure drop is low, e.g., at the end of water flooding. A parallel transducer (DP6), with a
resolution of 0.1 psi, measures the total pressure drop of the whole length of sand-pack when it is high. This
arrangement of pressure transducers enables us to approximately locate the water or oil front during the
displacements. The Vindom positive displacement pumps are able to inject the water with the accuracy of
0.001 cm3/min at pressures up to 6000 psi. The volume of each transfer vessel is approximately 2200 cm3,
which is adequate to inject more than five Pore Volume (PV) of oil and toluene in a run without refilling.
The purpose of using toluene flow is to better handle the produced fluid flow through the BPR, since the
bitumen is a sticky oil and may disturb the BPR functioning. This setup can be operated at the pressure and
temperature up to 1750 psi and 260 °C, respectively.

Figure 1—The schematic of the experimental apparatus.

SPE-195859-MS 5

Description of Rock/Fluid Properties

Rock Properties. The porous media used in this work were composed of clean silica sand of 100-140 mesh
size, which provides absolute permeability and porosity in the range of 6.65–8.00 Darcy and 0.335–0.344,
respectively. Based on the geometry of the sand holder, the annular space has the inner diameter of 3.175
cm (1.25"), the outer diameter of 6.50 cm (2.56"), and the length of 45.72 cm (18") which creates the bulk
volume of 1151.4 cm3 and the cross-section area of 25.19 cm2. All displacement tests were performed using
a fresh sand-pack to ensure that the initial wettability state of sand was the same. Also, we used a consistent
packing procedure to ensure that the porous media properties are within an acceptable range.
Fluid Properties. As mentioned earlier, there are two different oleic phases in our experiments. A clean
highly viscous Poly-alpha-olefin oil, named PAO-100, from the Chevron Philips Company with the density,
viscosity and the flash point of 0.858 g/cm3, 2335 cP (23 °C), and 255 °C, respectively, was employed in two
experiments. Athabasca bitumen, with the density, viscosity and the boiling point of 1.015 g/cm3, 19,700
cP (50 °C), and ~275 °C was used in the rest of experiments. The PAO-100 is a transparent fluid which is
soluble in hydrocarbon solvents and insoluble in water.
The viscosities of PAO-100 and Athabasca bitumen at the ambient pressure were measured with Anton
Paar MCR302 rotational rheometer with a coaxial cylinder geometry and Cone and Plate technique at
several temperatures and the results are shown in Figure 2. Equation (1) and Eq. (2) express the best-
fitted correlation for their viscosities as a function of temperature. Moreover, the densities of PAO-100 and
bitumen were measured at the ambient pressure over a wide range of temperature between 15 and 215 °C.
The obtained results demonstrate that the PAO-100 density varied from 0.858 g/cm3 at 24 °C to 0.746 g/cm3
at 200 °C and bitumen density reduced from 1.015 g/cm3 at 15 °C to 0.901 g/cm3 at 216 °C. The obtained
results for bitumen are in good agreement with the reported data in literature [43].The result of density
measurement at several temperatures is shown in Figure 3. It should be noted that linear trends of density
with temperature are seen for both fluids.

Figure 2—The viscosity-temperature curve of PAO-100, Athabasca bitumen and pure compressed water [44].
6 SPE-195859-MS

Figure 3—The density of PAO-100 (at ambient pressure), Athabasca bitumen

(at ambient pressure), and compressed water (at 300 psi) versus temperature.

The deionized water was used as the aqueous phase in all experiments. The density of pure water was
taken from the subcooled (compressed water) charts available in references [44, 45] and is illustrated versus
temperature in Figure 3. Fortunately, there is a non-linear empirical correlation proposed by Likhachev [44]
for the pure water viscosity as a function of pressure and temperature which has a good agreement with
the experimental data points. This equation is expressed in Eq. (3) and its plot versus temperature is shown
in Figure 3.
(1)

(2)

(3)

Experimental Procedure
The dynamic displacement technique, aka the unsteady-state technique, was implemented to measure the
two-phase oil/water relative permeability due to its less time-consuming nature. Four different isothermal
experiments were designed to determine the relative permeability at the temperatures of 24, 200 °C for PAO
and at 70 and 217 °C for the bitumen system. The system pressure was kept constant (~350 psi) in each run
which was higher than the steam pressure; therefore, there was no steam in the porous media. The absolute
permeability of sand-pack was evaluated by injection of deionized water directly from the pump at several
flow rates under constant back pressure (~350 psi) and the confining pressure of 750 psi at the ambient
temperature. Prior to starting the oil flooding, the water injection at a given flow rate was started and the
temperature controller was set to the desired temperature at the same time. The injection was continued
until reaching a stable condition. Afterward, the oil flooding was started at the same flow rate as the water
injection without any interruption. During the oil injection, the pressure drop in the four intervals of sand-
pack, as well as the temperature and outlet pressure, were monitored and recorded simultaneously. It should
be mentioned that the produced water was collected in a graduated cylinder before breakthrough time and
subsequently the effluent fluids were collected in small sample containers (approximately 40 ml samples)
until there was no water inside the collected fluids, i.e., the Siw was established within the sand-pack. All
samples were accurately weighted for the material balance checking. Approximately, 2 to 3 PV of the oil
phase injection was sufficient to reach the real irreducible water saturation.
SPE-195859-MS 7

In order to avoid any interruption during water flooding, the hot water injection was done at the same
flow rate as in the oil flood without shutting down the pump to obtain fully developed flow at time zero.
In the case of PAO, water injection was continued for at least 12 PV to get the final oil saturation close to
the residual oil saturation, while this value was around 25 PV for the bitumen systems, as the mobility ratio
was more unfavorable than PAO systems. It should be noted that the toluene transfer vessel was not used
for PAO systems; however, the toluene was injected into the produced fluid stream at a constant flow rate
(between 1 cm3/min to 0.005 cm3/min) during the water flooding of bitumen systems to facilitate the BPR
functioning, as it diluted the bitumen phase very well and prevented stickiness in the BPR. The toluene
flowrate was reduced over time as the oil production diminished. Different graduated cylinders and beakers
were utilized to collect the sample during the water flooding, where their sizes become bigger and bigger
as the experiment progresses over time. By this way, we were able to collect a measurable volume of oil in
each sample. The important properties of each experiment are tabulated in Table 1.

Table 1—A summary of dynamic displacement tests in deionized water/PAO-100/sand systems.

8 SPE-195859-MS

Analysis Approach
Effluent Analysis. To accurately evaluate the produced volume of oil during the water flooding of PAO
systems, a solvent extraction technique was employed. A measured volume of toluene was completely
mixed with the produced effluent and this mixture was transferred into the separatory funnel and allowed to
segregate into two phases (usually took 24 hrs). Afterward, the extracted lighter phase containing toluene
and PAO was extracted from the funnel and put into a Rotary Evaporator and evaporated under a mild
vacuum until only the oil remained in the flask; then, its weight was determined. Since water is not soluble
in the PAO, both toluene and water can be successfully extracted from the mixture.
However, the story is a little different for the bitumen systems. After collecting the effluents, a generous
amount of NaCl salt (around 10 weight percent) and toluene were added to the mixture and this mixture
was kept in a warm water bath sonicator apparatus for 12 hrs. After transferring the whole mixture in the
separatory funnel and allowing it to separate for 24 hrs, the extracted light phase including some emulsified
water was transferred into the Dean-Stark apparatus to extract the water. The remaining liquid (toluene
+bitumen) was placed into the Rotary Evaporator to extract the dissolved toluene. Thus, the mass of bitumen
was also accurately determined for establishing the material balance. Consequently, the fractional flow of
oil and water for each sample can be computed after this analysis. Figure 4 clearly shows the separated
phases including brine, bitumen+toluene, and emulsions in the separatory funnel.

Figure 4—The effluent analyzing procedure: before and after separation in the separatory funnel.

Relative Permeability Determination. In the present study, the effluent production and pressure drop data
from unsteady-state measurements are translated into the relative permeability curves by applying both JBN
[42] method, as an "explicit approach", and history match method, as an "implicit approach". Since the
history matching is an optimization problem in which the relative permeability curves are tuned until the
calculated pressure drop and water/oil production data from simulation fit the experimental data points, a
proper objective function needs to be defined. An in-house developed reservoir simulator was employed
using the generalized Corey relative permeability model [48]. Equation (4) represents the objective function
used in this study and Eq. (5) and Eq. (6) express the water and oil relative permeability of generalized
Corey relative permeability model, respectively.

(4)

(5)

(6)
SPE-195859-MS 9

It should be pointed out that the value of Wpi and Wqi were selected in the range of 0.2-0.3 and 0.8-0.7,
respectively. The following relationships (Eq. (7) to Eq. (11)) are used to apply the JBN [42] model on the
data collected from the experiments.
(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

(11)

Results and Discussion

Prior to discussing the measured relative permeability of oil and water in PAO-100 and bitumen systems,
it is better to see how the oil and water phase are displaced within the sand-pack during water flooding
and oil flooding, respectively. There are two criteria to evaluate the quality of fluid displacement within the
porous media, which assess the chance of viscous fingering and the capillary end effect in our experiments.
First, a scaling coefficient, introduced by Rappaport and Leas [49], is defined by Eq. (12). According
to their observations [49], the breakthrough oil recovery would be sensitive to the fluid velocity and
capillary end effect when the coefficient is less 3.5 cm2.cP/min. Based on Table 2, this value was within
the range of 0.772-4.174 cm2.cP/min in our experiments and significantly lower at high temperatures due
to the significant water viscosity reduction. However, we should emphasize that the pressure taps used for
measuring the segmental pressure drops showed insignificant capillary end effect in our systems. The pore
radius is large in such high permeability sand-pack and the capillary pressure is very small in magnitude.
The second criteria has been defined by Peters and Flock [50] as a dimensionless number, which relates
to viscous fingering phenomena in any displacement experiments. According to their criteria, unstable
displacements occurs in the transition region where this dimensionless number is higher than 13.56 and less
than 1000, while the stable displacement can be reached if this value is less than 13.56. The mobility ratio
is another criterion that can be considered to assess the likelihood of viscous fingering. Equation (13) and
Eq. (14) express the formulae of dimensionless number and the mobility ratio, respectively. The mobility
ratio and Peter's dimensionless number [50] dramatically decreased as the temperature was raised in our
systems, according to Table 2.
(12)

(13)

(14)
10 SPE-195859-MS

Table 2—The computed value of mobility ratio and displacement criteria from experiments.

It should be noted that the values of water and oil endpoint relative permeability computed from history
match technique were used in calculating the mobility ratios. As can be concluded from Table 2, the
displacements conditions were more unfavorable and unstable in low-temperature cases compared with
high temperature conditions.

IFT and Contact Angle Measurements

The IFT and contact angle measurements have been carried out for both bitumen and PAO systems in
the presence of deionized water and clean quartz glass (as representative of sand surface in contact angle
measurements) using Attension (by Biolin Scientific) apparatus which can withstand pressure up to 6000
psi and temperature of 200 °C. Note that the pendant drop technique was used for IFT measurements. Figure
5 shows the high-pressure and high-temperature cell used in this apparatus.

Figure 5—The Attension (by Biolin Scientific) apparatus used for IFT and contact angle measurements.

The results of measured IFT and contact angle at different temperatures and the test pressures are listed
in Table 3. As temperature increased in PAO/Water systems from 23.0 to 185.2 °C, the IFT reduced from
41.1 mN/m to 20.9 mN/m, respectively. Furthermore, the measured contact angle between the oil phase and
water phase on the quartz glass also decreased from 80.7° at 23.0 °C to 56.9° at 158.0 °C. Unfortunately,
we were unable to conduct the contact angle measurements at temperatures beyond 160 °C due to some
limitations of the equipment. However, the measured contact angles clearly show that the wettability of
PAO systems did not change too much at higher temperatures. The PAO/water/sand system generally was a
weakly water-wet system and remained in the same wettability state even after increasing the temperature
up to 158 °C. The IFT for bitumen/water system was substantially lower than PAO/water system at the
lower temperature but it increased with temperature, going from from 9.7 mN/m at 70 °C to 28.6 mN/m
at 200 °C. The measured IFT in this study shows an opposite trend from the reported values by Polikar et
al. [24], who found that the IFT decreased from 11.8 mN/m at 125 °C to 6.0 mN/m at 250 °C. The angle
between the bitumen and water phase decreased from 29.5° at 70 °C to 14.0° at 200 °C and 380 psi.
SPE-195859-MS 11

Table 3—The measured IFT and contact angle of PAO/water and bitumen/water systems at different conditions.

Based on the IFT and contact angle measurement for bitumen/water/sand systems, slight wettability
alteration may happen at the high-temperature conditions. Figure 6 depicts the droplet of oil in the water
phase for IFT and contact angle measurements in different experiments.

Figure 6—The droplet shape of oil phase in the water phase captured in Attension apparatus at different conditions.

Explicit Relative Permeability

The explicit two-phase oil/water relative permeabilities were obtained using JBN [42] method. To apply
this technique, the cumulative volume of produced oil and water in each sample (measured at ambient
conditions) were converted to the test conditions by considering the fluid thermal expansion coefficient as
well as their compressibility factors. Then, the average water saturation in the sand-pack at various stages
of flooding was computed. There are two derivative terms in the JBN [42] method, namely the derivative of
average water saturation (or cumulative oil production) with respect to the cumulative water injection and
the derivative of reciprocal of relative injectivity multiplied by cumulative water injection with respect to the
reciprocal of cumulative water injection, which need to be calculated accurately. The best way to compute
these two derivatives from the experimental data points is to first fit smooth curves to the experimental data.
Figures 7 demonstrates the cumulative oil production data versus cumulative water injection in units of pore
volume for different experiments. The solid lines represent the best-fitted curves on the experimental data
points. Several types of curve, such as the polynomial function, power function, exponential function, log
function, and their combinations were examined to find the best regression and we found that a combination
of exponential and log function with the degree of 5 can best match the experimental data with the value of
R-square close to 1.0. This type of curve can be used for both derivatives. Equation (15) and Eq. (16) express
the correlations used in this study. Miller and Ramey [17] proposed the log form correlation for cumulative
oil production and combination of log and exponential function for reciprocal of relative injectivity plot.
12 SPE-195859-MS

Based on Figure 7, the ultimate oil production (reached at the end of the experiment), as well as the rate of
oil production, increase as temperature increases for both systems.

Figure 7—The cumulative oil production as a function of cumulative water injection during water flooding.

Table 4—The best-fitted correlations used to predict the cumulative oil production
and reciprocal of relative injectivity multiply by cumulative water injection.

The total pressure drop recorded during the water flooding of different experiments is shown in Figure
8, where the total pressure drop dramatically declined as temperature increased (because of oil viscosity
reduction). The reciprocal of relative injectivity multiplied by the cumulative water injection versus the
reciprocal of cumulative water injection for all experiments are plotted in Figure 9, in which the solid lines
represent the fitted curves.
SPE-195859-MS 13

Figure 8—The pressure drop recorded as a function of injected water during water flooding.

Figure 9—The reciprocal of relative injectivity multiplied by cumulative injection

as a function of reciprocal of cumulative water injection during the water flooding.

The explicitly calculated relative permeability for PAO/water and bitumen/water systems at different
temperatures are presented in Figure 10. According to this figure, the relative permeability to oil and water
are slightly changed by increasing the temperature up to 200 °C in PAO/water systems. The biggest change
in water relative permeability for this system occurs at water saturation higher than 0.45. The endpoint
relative permeability to oil at 23 and 200 °C are close to each other (within the range of 0.83-0.95); however,
the water endpoint relative permeability increased from 0.03 to 0.14 at 200 °C. This is due to the fact that
the relative permeability to oil at the end of our waterflood, even by injecting 21 PV of water, did not reach
the zero value. It confirms that the actual residual oil saturation was not reached in Experiment #1, thus the
value of water relative permeability calculated at this point is not the actual endpoint relative permeability
value. We can suggest that the explicitly computed water relative permeability curve at 23 °C is only a
part of the whole curve and the real endpoint relative permeability to water is higher than 0.03. Based on
these results, the two-phase oil/water relative permeability may actually be independent of temperature in
the PAO/water/sand system. Moreover, the IFT and contact angle measurement in PAO systems also show
that there is a little modification in wettability state and the change in IFT is not large enough to alter the
relative permeability.
14 SPE-195859-MS

Figure 10—The two-phase relative permeability obtained by JBN [42]

method, right side: PAO/water systems, left side: bitumen/water systems.

The two-phase bitumen/water relative permeability presented in Figure 10 indicates that the bitumen/
water/sand system is much more sensitive to the temperature change. The oil relative permeability at 217
°C is around 2.5 times higher than at low temperature in the whole range of water saturation, and the oil
endpoint relative permeability decreased from 1.0 to 0.42 as temperature was decreased from 217 to 70 °C.
Moreover, the trend of water relative permeability curve shows even higher temperature-dependency. As the
temperature becomes high in bitumen/water systems, the water relative permeability increases dramatically.
Therefore, the effect of temperature on oil/water relative permeability is more pronounced in bitumen/water
system. The PAO/water systems is ultra-clean with the absence of any dissolved ions in the water phase and
heavy components existing in the oil phase. These results suggest that in the bitumen/water/sand system, the
effect of temperature is significant and must be considered in any reservoir simulation studies for bitumen
systems. Table 5 summarizes the practical value of relative permeability curve characteristics observed in
Experiment #1 through Experiment #4.

Table 5—The practical values of relative permeability curve characteristics at different temperatures.

It should be mentioned that a small amount of suspended fine particles were present in the Athabasca
bitumen which may have caused some pore throats of porous media to plug. We installed an inline-filter
(200 mesh size) in our setup to minimize this problem as much as possible. Figure 11 shows the solid particle
captured by this inline-filter.
SPE-195859-MS 15

Figure 11—Solid particle (0.41 gr) captured by the inline-filter from Athabasca bitumen after injecting 1300 cc.

Implicit Relative Permeability

The history matching process is carried out using our in-house developed reservoir simulator, which has
been described elsewhere [51]. The finite difference technique with a fully implicit computation scheme is
employed to solve the governing equations in this simulator. As mentioned earlier, the generalized Corey
[52] relative permeability model (Eq. (5) and Eq. (6)) is tuned through the history matching processes by
optimizing the defined objective function (Eq. (4)). A sufficiently large number of grid block was selected
to accurately simulate both the oil flooding and water flooding stages. Though it may appear that the history
matching of oil flooding stage would not bring any benefit to the water flooding stage, in our tests the water
flooding process took place without any interruption of flow. Hence, we imported the final values of primary
variables of each grid block, including water saturation and oil phase pressure at the end of oil flooding
as the initial condition for waterflooding. In this way, we can simulate the water flooding processes more
accurately. Furthermore, it can be assessed whether or not the irreducible water saturation has been achieved
in our experiments. Note that the capillary pressure is assumed to be zero in our simulations. There are six
different parameters involved in two-phase oil/water relative permeability curves, including the irreducible
water saturation, residual oil saturation, oil and water exponent, and endpoint relative permeability to oil
and water. Although, we can optimize all these parameters in the history matching process but it is sufficient
to optimize only the uncertain variables.
Actually, no water production was observed at the end of oil flooding stages of both PAO/water and
bitumen/water systems at any temperature, which means that the actual irreducible water saturation was
successfully developed. The primary oil flooding of fully water saturated sand-pack was performed under
very favorable mobility ratio (less than 0.05) and a piston-like displacement occurred in the sand-pack.
Figure 12 clearly shows that in Experiment #2 and Experiment #3, the pressure drops reached steady
values. Hence, the measured irreducible water and correspondingly the endpoint relative permeability to oil
obtained from the experiments, were used and kept constant in our simulations.
16 SPE-195859-MS

Figure 12—The sectional pressure drop in different sections of sand-

pack in Experiment #2 (left side) and Experiment #3 (right side).

The residual oil saturation and endpoint relative permeability to water along with the oil and water
exponents were iteratively tuned in the history matching process. The reason is that the endpoint relative
permeability to oil sometimes did not reach the zero value at the end of experiments (e.g. Experiment #1);
therefore, the actual residual oil saturation should be lower than the practical value expressed in Table 5. We
also encountered this issue in the bitumen/water system. The following strategies was chosen for different
systems to address the aforementioned issues:
1. Since the explicitly determined relative permeability curve was more or less independent of
temperature in PAO-100 system, we first tuned the high-temperature experiment (which involved
lower mobility ratio) and then used the tuned values of the relative permeability parameters as initial
guess for low-temperature case. In other words, we hypothesized that "if the relative permeability is
insensitive to the temperature, no modification would be required to match the production and pressure
drop data in low-temperature case using high-temperature relative permeability.
2. The scenario selected for bitumen/water system is different from the previous one. The explicitly
calculated relative permeability curves are dramatically different at higher temperature, we let the
simulator to tune the residual oil saturation, but within a limited range of 80% -100% of practical
residual oil saturation. This range was made a little wider for endpoint relative permeability to water
(100% to 120% of practical value).
The results of using the aforementioned strategy are shown in Figure 13, which plots the predicted value
of cumulative oil production versus the cumulative water injection at different temperatures. As we can see,
the solid lines computed by the history matching overlap the experimental data points. The predicted total
pressure drop within the sand-pack during the water flooding stage in different experiments are presented in
Figure 14, where the solid lines are well matched to the experimental data points. Therefore, both pressure
drop and production data are very well history matched using this strategy.
SPE-195859-MS 17

Figure 13—The estimated cumulative oil production by history matching during water flooding.

Figure 14—The total pressure drop estimated by history matching during water flooding.

The implicit relative permeability curves obtained by the history match process are presented in Figure
15. The water relative permeability curve was independent of temperature in PAO/water systems while the
oil relative permeability curve was slightly different at the two temperatures. Also, the residual oil saturation
taken from the high-temperature case was applicable to the low-temperature case without any change. The
optimized value of endpoint relative permeability to water for the high-temperature case is about 0.30 which
represents an extension of the curve computed by JBN [42] method to higher water saturation. This is
due to the fact that the optimized value of residual oil saturation was lower than the practical residual oil
saturation and caused higher endpoint relative permeability to water. The same value of this parameter was
also found by history matching the low-temperature case, which shows that this parameter is insensitive to
the temperature. The only difference between the two-phase relative permeability curve characteristics is
the endpoint relative permeability to oil which may be caused by uncertainty in the oil viscosity values. The
oil viscosity is a strong function of temperature at low-temperature condition (e.g. ambient condition) and
even a small variation in temperature can significantly change the viscosity of the oil.
18 SPE-195859-MS

Figure 15—The two-phase relative permeability obtained by history

match, right side: PAO/water systems, left side: bitumen/water systems.

Although the effect of temperature on relative permeability to oil and water in PAO systems is weak,
the temperature's impact is dramatic on bitumen/water relative permeability calculated by both JBN and
history match methods. The optimized value of residual oil saturation, the endpoint relative permeability
to water as well as the oil and water exponent are tabulated in Table 6, which clearly show this difference
in the two systems.

Table 6—The optimized value of relative permeability curve characteristics at different temperatures.

In the bitumen system, the optimized value of residual oil saturation for low-temperature and high-
temperature are only slightly lower than the practical values observed in the experiments. These value
decreased from 0.282 to 0.145 as temperature elevated from 70 to 217 °C. The oil and water exponent
of Corey relative permeability model extracted from the history match show only small changes with
temperature. The effect of temperature on water relative permeability was more severe than on oil relative
permeability where the endpoint relative permeability to water increased from 0.4% at low temperature to
30% at elevated temperature. The endpoint relative permeability to oil also increased with temperature but
more modestly. By examining the cross point of oil and water relative permeability curves of PAO/water/
sand system, we can conclude that the intersection occurs at the water saturation of 0.58 for both low- and
high-temperature conditions, which is the sign of water-wet behavior. This result is well supported by the
contact angle measurement. The oil/water relative permeability curve for bitumen/water/sand system has
the cross points at the water saturation of 0.76 for Experiment #4 (217 °C) and at 0.7 for Experiment #3 (70
°C). It suggests the system tends to be more water-wet at higher temperatures based on Craig's rule [53].
A more reliable way to assess the wettability state of the system at high-temperature is by measuring
the contact angle. According to this test, the system tends to be more oil-wet at high temperatures. This
conclusion is more acceptable if we also consider the variation of oil and water exponent as well as the
SPE-195859-MS 19

irreducible water saturation with temperature. There are three different studies in the literature done by
Modaresghazani et al. [54] and Polikar et al [23, 24] which employed a real bitumen in their relative
permeability measurements. No temperature effect on the relative permeability was observed by Polikar
et al. [23, 24], due to the lack of interaction between porous media and bitumen. The endpoint relative
permeability to oil and water were around 0.76 and 0.16, respectively. The relative permeability to bitumen
and water at the temperature of 80 °C was also determined by Modaresghazani et al. [54] which is illustrated
in Figure 16.

Figure 16—Comparison of imbibition relative permeability for bitumen/water obtained from different studies.

Conclusion
The aim of this study was to examine the effect of temperature on two-phase oil/water relative permeability
in two different systems, including an ultra-clean system and an oil sand system. PAO-100 (highly
viscous synthetic oil) and dionized water were used as the ultra-clean fluids in two sets of experiments at
temperatures of 23 and 200 °C, while Athabasca bitumen and deionized water were employed in another
two experiments at 70 and 217 °C which represent the oil sand systems. Thus, we are able to distinguish
how the temperature affect a clean system (devoid of any dissolved ion in the aqueous phase or heavy
polar components in the oil phase) and the oil sand systems. The unsteady-state technique was used in
the experimental tests and the results were analyzed with both explicit and implicit schemes for inferring
the two-phase relative permeability from the experiments. As the relative permeability is affected by the
wettability and IFT between the two phases, the contact angle measurement along with the IFT measurement
at test temperatures and pressures were carried out to assess any wettability alteration and variation in fluid/
fluid interaction. The important conclusions from this work are summarized below:
1. To obtain relatively smooth relative permeability curves with the JBN [42] method, it is necessary
to properly fit smooth curves to the production and pressure drop data. The analytical expressions
proposed for this purpose provided very good fit of the experimental data points and resulted in
acceptable shapes of two-phase oil/water relative permeability curves.
2. The relative permeability curves obtained by JBN [42] method and history matching techniques were
consistent with each other in both systems.
3. According to the results of both JBN [42] method and the history matching technique, the relative
permeability to water was insensitive to the temperature in PAO system, while a slight modification
in oil relative permeability was observed. Although the practical value of residual oil saturation
20 SPE-195859-MS

decreased at high temperature in PAO systems, the real value of irreducible water, residual oil
saturation, and endpoint relative permeability to water remained constant at different temperatures.
The reduction of endpoint relative permeability to oil at the lowest temperature was partly related
to the uncertainty in oil viscosity measurement. Therefore, the two-phase relative permeability of a
PAO/water/sand system was practically independent of temperature.
4. A pronounced dependency of relative permeability on temperature was observed in bitumen/water/
sand system, where the relative permeability to water at the highest temperature increased dramatically
compared to its value at the low-temperature. Furthermore, the endpoint relative permeability to oil
was also significantly lower at the lower temperature. The oil and water exponent of history matched
Corey relative permeability also changed with temperature.
5. IFT and contact angle in PAO systems confirmed that the wettability of sand systems (quartz glass)
slightly changed with temperature but still remained in weekly water-wet condition. The IFT of
water/PAO-100 decreased from 41.1 mN/m to 20.9 mN/m as the temperature increased to 185.2 °C.
However, such changes in fluid/fluid interaction and rock/fluid interaction were not large enough to
change the relative permeability curves.

Acknowledgment
The present work was financially supported by CFREF, NSERC, and Nexen/CNOOC Industrial Research
Chair in Advanced In-Situ Recovery Processes for Oil Sands program. The authors gratefully acknowledge
the Chevron-Philips company for providing the PAO sample for this research. The authors would like to
express their gratitude to Dr. Amitabha Majumdar and Mr. Kushal preet Singh for their assistance during
the experimental part of this study.

Nomenclature
Ai Coefficient of Log function
Ci Coefficient of Log function
D Equivalent sand-pack diameter
g Gravitational acceleration (m/s2)
Isc Dimension number
J Objective function
kro0 Oil relative permeability endpoint
krw0 Water relative permeability endpoint
L Sand-pack length (cm)
No Oil exponent
Np Cumulative oil production (PV)
ΔP(t) Pressure drop at each time (psi)
ΔPi Initial pressure drop (psi)
Qtiobs Observed cumulative oil production (PV)
Qi Cumulative injection (PV)
Sw Water saturation
Swout Water saturation at the outlet
T Temperature (°C)
Bi Coefficient of Log function
C* Wettability number
fwout Outlet water fractional flow
IR Relative injectivity
ID Scaling coefficient
SPE-195859-MS 21

kro Oil relative permeability

krw Water relative permeability
Ki Coefficient of Log function
M Mobility ratio
Nw Water exponent
P Pressure (psi)
ΔPical Calculated pressure drop (psi)
ΔPiobs Observed pressure drop (psi)
Qtical Calculated cumulative oil production (PV)
Siw Irreducible water saturation
Sw̄ Average water saturation
Sor Residual oil saturation
vc Characteristic velocity (m/s)
v* Constant superficial velocity (m/s)
Wqi Oil production weight factor
Wpi Pressure drop weight factor

Greek symbols
α Angle core makes with the vertical
μw Water viscosity (cP)
μBit Bitumen viscosity (cP)
ρw Water density (g/cm3)
μo Oil viscosity (cP)
μPAO PAO viscosity (cP)
ρo Oil density (g/cm3)
σ Interfacial tension (mN/m)

Abbreviation
CSS Cyclic Steam Stimulation
IFT Interfacial Tension
PV Pore Volume
TEOR Thermal Enhanced Oil Recovery
PAO Polyalphaolefin
SAGD Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage

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