COVENANT UNIVERSITY, CANAANLAND, OTA.

PET 527 - PETROLEUM ENGINEERING LABORTORY II

EXPERIMENT 1: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF

THE TWO METHODS OF DETERMINING SATURATION IN
THE LABORATORY

BY

ADEYEMI M. OLUWAFISAYO
15CN03211

DATE SUBMITTED: OCT-8-2020

PET 527 – ASSIGNMENT 1

Questions

Write on Advantages and Disadvantages of The Two methods of Determining Saturation in the
Laboratory

Answers

Advantages and Disadvantages of The Two methods of Determining Saturation

in the Laboratory

All methods that are used to measure the original reservoir rock saturation are based on a simple principle
which is - leaching. Leaching is basically the process of removing liquids from a solid (in this case - a rock
sample) Based on the principle of leaching, we can devise two distinct methods for determining fluid
saturation

The First Method involves using heat to extract the fluids that are present in the pore spaces of the rock and
is called retort distillation

The Second Method involves using both heat and an organic solvent to extract the fluids in the pore spaces
and is called Dean-Stark extraction

Retort Distillation Advantages

1. Becoming more common for shale gas/oil core analysis
2. Grain loss errors on saturation calculations are potentially less than Dean–Stark extraction
3. Large sample volume may be more representative than small plugs.
4. Minimal supervision is required.
5. It is cheaper than the Dean-Stark Extraction method and is also very rapid

Retort Distillation Disadvantages

1. Oil and water volumes and gas volumes are obtained on different samples so samples must be
lithologically similar
2. Porosity ‘measurement’ is not repeatable.
3. High temperatures are required
4. Because of the high temperature used, the water of crystallization in the rock is driven off which causes
water recovery values to be greater than pore water.
5. High temperature used may crack and coke the oil causing the collected oil volume to be different from
the volume of oil initially in the rock sample. In fact, the cracking and coking most likely decreases the
liquid volume and in some cases coats the internal walls of the rock sample itself

Dean-Stark Extraction Advantages

1. The volumes of both oil and water are measured directly
2. An accurate value of Sw is determined making it the recommended method for Sw measurements on
cores.
3. Provides independent verification of laboratory-calculated final water saturations in SCAL tests.
4. After extraction of the fluids and drying, the cleaned core may be used for measurement of other
petrophysical properties and quantities (permeability, porosity, sieve analysis, mineral grain density,
etc.)
5. In oil-based mud drilled cores, Sw from Dean–Stark can represent reservoir Sw.

Dean-Stark Extraction Disadvantages

1. Using this method requires an abnormally long amount of time to extract all the water from very tight
formations such as low permeability chalk
2. Because of the low rate of water recovery, there would be a tendency to prematurely terminate the
distillation process may occur under the assumption that a plateau in the cumulative water volume
versus time has been reached.
3. Not suited for cores drilled with a water-based mud unless suitable tracers are used during coring. This
is normally expensive and complicated in terms of logistics and HSE on wellsite and lab. Interpretation
is also required to determine the degree of mud invasion.
4. The use of the lower boiling point toluene in higher salinity brines may not efficiently vaporize the
water if it contains divalent cations. Xylene is often used for carbonates as it has a higher boiling point
(138 °C) than toluene (112 °C).
5. Water volume and pore volume errors in measurements on small plugs (reduced pore volume) can be
large and can have a significant impact on the data.