SPE-169658-MS

Laboratory Investigation of Miscible CO2 WAG Injection Efficiency in

Carbonate
Sebastien Duchenne, Gilles Puyou, Philippe Cordelier, Marcel Bourgeois, Gerald Hamon, Total SA

Copyright 2014, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE EOR Conference at Oil and Gas West Asia held in Muscat, Oman, 31 March–2 April 2014.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of the paper have not been
reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect any position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its
officers, or members. Electronic reproduction, distribution, or storage of any part of this paper without the written consent of the Society of Petroleum Engineers is prohibited. Permission to
reproduce in print is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words; illustrations may not be copied. The abstract must contain conspicuous acknowledgment of SPE copyright.

Abstract
Remaining oil saturation, trapped gas saturation, three-phase relative permeability and injectivity are among the many
parameters that play a major role in miscible CO2 water-alternating-gas (WAG) injection efficiency. In this work, we present
a series of coreflood experiments designed to assess these parameters and investigate the microscopic efficiency of CO2
WAG injection on carbonated reservoirs, far above minimum miscibility pressure (MMP).
Experiments were carried out on intermediate-wet carbonate cores, initially saturated with light oil from a Middle East
field, at reservoir conditions. Production was monitored at both reservoir and laboratory conditions providing material
balance of each phase and separating the production of flashed oil, condensate and gas. A full compositional analysis was
performed on produced volumes using gas chromatography (GC) and liquid analysis of flashed oil and condensate.
Differential pressure across the core was also monitored for relative permeability estimation. Finally, a dual energy X-Ray
scanner was used to measure three phase in-situ saturations, cross check material balance results and ensure that laboratory
artifacts (end effects) do not influence interpretation conclusions. Coreflood data was complemented with PVT experiments
including CO2-oil phase behavior characterization through multiple contact test (MCT) and supercritical fluid extraction
(SFE).
CO2 WAG injections showed great performance with faster and better recovery than pure CO2 injection. After several
cycles of WAG injections, high levels of differential pressure across the core were reached due to a reduction in both water
and gas relative permeabilities with injection cycles.

Introduction

The injection of miscible carbon dioxide (CO2) into oil reservoirs for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) has received considerable
attention in recent years. It is considered as one of the most important technique to recover oil trapped in carbonated
reservoirs through its favorable properties including miscibility with oil and stripping/swelling of oil under certain conditions.
CO2 is not miscible on first contact with reservoir oils but research has shown that with sufficiently high reservoir pressures,
CO2 can achieve dynamic miscibility (Stalkup, 1984). The pressure required for achieving dynamic miscibility with CO2 is
usually significantly lower than the pressure required with natural gas, flue gas or nitrogen, making it a very attractive choice
when a potential source of CO2 is within reach.
A disadvantage of CO2 flooding over processes like waterflooding is its very unfavorable mobility ratio because of its
very low viscosity. For instance, at a pressure of 260 bars and a temperature of about 100 °C, CO2 viscosity is about 0.06 cP.
CO2 is often used in a water-alternating-gas (WAG) process to counter the tendency of gas breaking through the reservoir
very quickly. Slugs of water are injected between slugs of gas to lower the mobility behind the front, thus increasing global
sweeping efficiency (Caudle and Dyes, 1958). This also reduces the volume of CO2 that needs to be injected in the reservoir.
Understanding the complex recovery mechanisms taking place inside the reservoir during such process involves
extensive experimental work necessary to fully characterize microscopic aspects such as fluid interactions and multi-phase
flow (Al-Otaibi et al., 2012). While PVT experiments are able to characterize phase behaviors with great precision, three-
phase flow is still a field where experimental work is lengthy, expensive and difficult to carry out – especially when using a
gas with strong fluid interactions (e.g. compositional exchanges) with oil, such as CO2 – leading to a limited number of
experimental results published in the literature. In particular, it often requires conducting not one, but several experiments to
fully capture two-phase and three-phase fluid behaviors. Three-phase flow models (e.g. Larsen et al., 1998, Blunt et al., 1999,
2 SPE-169658-MS

Egermann et al., 2000) have been developed and implemented in current reservoir simulators to bypass experimental work
and predict parameters such as relative permeabilities, but several studies (e.g. Element et al., 2003, Ahmadloo et al., 2009)
showed that these models are not able to capture all of the mechanisms impacting recovery such as hysteresis on relative
permeability or water shielding.
In Duchenne et al. (2014), we presented an efficient experimental design, apparatus and procedure to carry out CO2
WAG experiments on carbonate cores at reservoir conditions. The monitoring set up, including full mass balance of each
phase at both reservoir and laboratory conditions, full compositional analysis of liquids and gas produced, three-phase
saturations in situ monitoring during injection and differential pressure measurements, proved to be reliable to provide high
quality data that can consistently be used in a reservoir simulator to interpret the experiments and deduce physical properties
of interest.
In this paper, we present results obtained from three CO2-water cyclic injections performed at reservoir conditions on
horizontal carbonate cores with light oil from a Middle East field. These experiments are part of an experimental program
designed to investigate the microscopic efficiency of miscible cyclic CO2/water injection through the analysis of injection
cycles on three phase relative permeability and the study of water-blocking. Experiments include measurement of both two-
phase and three-phase data (e.g. in-situ saturations, relative permeabilities).

Experiments

First, let us briefly review the experimental design and the monitoring set up during the experiments. This was explained in
great details in Duchenne et al. (2014). All experiments were performed at reservoir conditions of 260 bars and 94 °C. In the
following, reservoir or experimental conditions will refer to these pressure and temperature conditions.

Fluids
Live oil used in the experiments was sampled from a Middle-East carbonate field and was recombined by adding normal
hydrocarbon single alkane elements to the dead oil until target composition of the reservoir fluid was reached. Undersaturated
live oil properties at experimental conditions are described Table 1.

Table 1 – Live oil properties at reservoir conditions

Density Viscosity Psat Bo Rs

(g/cc) (cP) (bar) (m3/Sm3) (Sm3/Sm3)
0.785 1.65 51.4 1.113 41.4
+/- 0.005 +/- 0.1 +/- 0.5 +/- 0.006 +/- 0.2

At experimental conditions, CO2 is both supercritical and multiple-contact miscible with reservoir live oil. Minimum
miscibility pressure was estimated at 160 bars, using an in-house PVT simulator and an equation of state built from several
PVT experiments including a multiple contact test (MCT) and a supercritical fluid extraction (SFE). Figure 1 and Figure 2
show the results of the MCT experiment performed to measure oil swelling and stripping when injecting few moles of CO2.
Results show that oil volume can swell by a factor of 1.5 when saturated with CO2. Figure 1 also shows the results of the SFE
experiment conducted to quantify how much oil can be stripped by CO2 at supercritical conditions. It shows that a substantial
weight fraction (~20%) of oil cannot be vaporized by CO2, even if large volumes of CO2 are contacting oil. For both
experiments, good match is obtained between experimental data and data simulated with the PVT model (i.e. equation of
state). Note that the PVT model is only valid for reasonable amount of CO2 injected (i.e. < 1000 moles of CO2 per mole of
oil). CO2 properties at experimental conditions are described Table 2.
Formation brine was saturated with CO2 at reservoir conditions to prevent dissolution of CO2 in the brine during the
experiments. Its components were as follows: 77.8 g/l NaCl; 4 g/l KCl; 31.9 CaCl2; 9.2 MgCl2. This corresponds to an
equivalent salinity of 110 g/l NaCl. Brine properties at experimental conditions are described Table 2.

Table 2 – CO2 and brine properties at reservoir conditions

Fluid Density Viscosity

(g/cc) (cP)
CO2 0.633 0.06
+/- 0.005 NA
Brine 0.1049 0.42
+/- 0.005 0.1
SPE-169658-MS 3

Core preparation
All cores used in the experiments were sampled from the same carbonate outcrop. They underwent CT-scan imaging and
miscible tracer test to ensure homogeneity within the core. Cores were considered homogeneous as their dispersivity was less
than 0.5 cm. Cores were loaded in a core holding cell which was set horizontally on the X-Ray displacement rig. Primary
drainage was performed on cores 100% saturated with water, to establish initial water saturation. Core wettability was then
changed from water-wet to mixed-wet by ageing live oil at reservoir conditions for two weeks inside the cores. Cores
properties are summarized Table 3.

Table 3 – Physical properties of core samples

Exp Exp L D PV Φ Kg Kw Ko(swi) Swi Pe

# type (cm) (cm) (cc) (%) (mD) (mD) (mD) (%)
1 Continuous 44.5 50 257.9 29.8 26.1 13.4 11.4 21.8 110
(CO2 first) +/- 0.1 +/- 0.1 +/- 0.4 +/- 0.1 +/- 1 +/- 0.4 +/- 0.3 +/- 0.2
2 WAG 44.1 50 259.5 30 19 15.9 10 23.1 120
(CO2 first) +/- 0.1 +/- 0.1 +/- 0.4 +/- 0.2 +/- 2 +/- 0.2 +/- 0.2 +/- 0.1
3 WAG 44.2 50 248.5 29.1 28 22.6 12 24.5 120
(Brine first) +/- 0.1 +/- 0.1 +/- 0.3 +/- 0.1 +/- 6 +/- 0.2 +/- 0.1 +/- 0.2

Monitoring
Figure 3 shows the experimental set-up used in this study, with the coreholding cell, the injection system, the production
system and the X-Ray scanner. Produced fluids are collected in two high-pressure pumps, alternatively connected to the core
holder outlet while the other is emptied. Pumps are emptied phase by phase to allow counting of the volumes at reservoir
conditions and separate each phase when flashing volumes to laboratory conditions. This allows clear separation of flashed
oil and condensate and rigorous measurement of Bo, GOR, vaporized water and dissolved gas. When a production pump is
emptied, effluents go through a densimeter before being collected in a graduated burette. Volumes of liquids are then
measured in the burette and undergo full compositional analysis (i.e. C1-C30+). Gases go through a gas meter and a gas
chromatograph for light components analysis (i.e. C1-C7).
The X-Ray scanner is composed of a dual energy X-Ray generator with a stable NaI detector set on a measurement rig
with two displacement axes to allow 1.5D in situ three-phase saturation measurements. A series of three differential pressure
sensors with different working range are set between inlet and outlet of the core holder to measure differential pressure across
the core with high resolution. See Duchenne et al. (2014) for more information on the monitoring.

Corefloods
Injection rate in all experiments was set to 7 cc/h. This corresponds to a front velocity of 0.3 m/day and a capillary number
Nc<10-6, which describes flow behavior far from wells, where capillary forces are stronger than viscous forces. Two types of
experiments were conducted with different injection patterns to provide complementary data.
The first experiment consisted in a 4 continuous injection sequence: CO2 – Brine – CO2 – Brine. Each injection phase
had the same protocol: start injection at 7 cc/h and wait for stabilization in production and pressure drop (i.e. no more
saturation changes); Raise rate to 14 cc/h until steady state is reached, then 21 cc/h and 28 cc/h to get rid of capillary end
effects; Finally, measure permeability of injected phase (brine or CO2) with Darcy’s law, by decreasing rate step by step.
Table 4 summarizes parameters measured during exp. #1.

Table 4 – Parameters measured during exp. #1 (continuous injections)

Injection # Phase Parameters

1 CO2 Sorm; KrCO2/oil (2-phase); RFCO2
2 Brine Sgr; Krw@Sorm (3-phase)
3 CO2 Swr; KrCO2@Sorm (3-phase)
4 Brine Sgr; Krw@Sorm (3-phase)

Two experiments were conducted in WAG mode by performing a 6-cycles injection sequence of alternating CO2 and
carbonated brine. The first one started with CO2 injection and the second one started with brine injection. Each cycle
consisted in injecting 0.2 pore volume (PV) of brine and 0.2 PV of CO2 at reservoir conditions. At the end of each experiment
a continuous injection of water (~2.5 PV) was conducted to measure water permeability after a series of rate bumps. Table 5
summarizes parameters measured during exp. #2 and exp. #3.
4 SPE-169658-MS

Table 5 – Parameters measured during exp. #2 and exp. #3 (WAG)

Exp # Exp type Parameters

2 WAG (CO2 first) Sorm; RFWAG; Sgr; Krw@Sorm (3-phase)
3 WAG (brine first) Sorm; RFWAG; Sgr; Krw@Sorm (3-phase)

Results and discussion

In this section, we present results obtained from experimental data acquired from the three corefloods performed. Focus will
be given to the parameters of interest such as remaining oil saturation, trapped gas saturation, recovery, three-phase relative
permeability and injectivity.
Table 6 summarizes experimental results obtained from exp. #1 (continuous injections). Three-phase X-Ray saturations
are in very good agreement with saturations obtained from material balance calculations. This is also shown Figure 4.
Material balance oil saturation and recovery factor were calculated as follows (see Duchenne et al., 2014):
, 1 , /
RF 1 , /
with Swi, Vo(P,T), Vcond(lab), Bc and Soi are the initial water saturation, the cumulated production of liquids (i.e. oil) at
reservoir conditions, the cumulated production of condensate at laboratory conditions, the condensate volume factor and the
initial oil saturation, respectively. Bc was estimated with a PVT simulator, using the measured composition of condensate
samples. Uncertainty on X-Ray saturations was estimated between 3 and 5 percent using Monte-Carlo simulations, by
randomizing attenuation coefficients and X-Ray count, assuming Gaussian distributions. See Duchenne et al. 2014 for
complete description of X-Ray saturation calculations.
Permeability of injected phase (i.e. CO2 or brine) was measured during exp. #1 at the end of each injection phase, after a
series of rate increase performed to get rid of capillary end effects. No end effect was visible on the X-Ray saturations and no
change was measured in production cuts during rate increase. This means that measured relative permeability endpoints are
not affected by capillary end-effects. Relative permeability endpoints are plotted Figure 5. Clear hysteresis is visible on the
gas phase (Figure 5 (a)) with a reduction of gas mobility between two-phase (i.e. first CO2 injection) and three-phase (i.e.
second CO2 injection) flows. Hysteresis on the gas phase is also highlighted by the evolution of trapped gas saturation. From
gas saturation, it is possible to calculate Land’s trapping coefficient (Land, 1968) relating trapped gas saturation and initial
gas saturation. Land coefficient decreases with injection cycle as trapped gas saturation increases (Figure 6). No clear
hysteresis is visible on the water phase (Figure 5 (b)).

Table 6 – Experimental results exp. #1 (continuous injections)

Initial CO2 Brine CO2 Brine

1 2 3 4
PV injected 0 6.26 6.19 12.53 7.18
Cumul PV inj 0 6.26 12.45 24.98 32.16
BT (from beginning of phase inj.) 0.3 0.5 0.1 0.6
So MB (s.u.) 78 12.2 12.2 11.8 11.8
Sw MB (s.u.) 22 22 72.6 41.8 67.2
Sg MB (s.u.) 0 65.8 15.2 46.4 21
So XR (s.u.) 80 11.5 11.5 11.5 11.5
Sw XR (s.u.) 0 21.8 78.5 43.2 72
Sg XR (s.u.) 20 66.7 10 45.3 16.5
RF MB (%) 0 84.3 84.3 84.3 84.8
from stripping (%) 0 25.5 25.5 26 26
from sweeping (%) 0 58.8 58.8 58.8 58.8
RF XR (%) 0 85.2 85.2 85.2 85.2
Type of K Ko(Swi) Kg Kw Kg Kw
K (mD) 11.45 11.38 4.07 2.42 2.31
+/- 2.8 +/- 1.7 +/- 0.1 +/- 0.4 +/- 0.3
Kr (%) 100 99.4 35.5 21.2 20.2
+/- 15 +/- 1 +/- 3 +/- 2

Table 7 summarizes experimental results obtained from the two WAG injections. These configurations were more
challenging for X-Ray saturation measurements with all three saturations varying at the same time during injection and
SPE-169658-MS 5

strong compositional exchanges between oil and gas phases. X-Ray saturations are in good agreement with saturations
obtained from material balance. Material balance oil saturation and recovery factor were calculated as follows:
1 /
RF 1 /
with Bo, the oil volume factor and Vo(lab), the cumulated production of oil at laboratory conditions. Note that the method
used is slightly different from the one for exp. #1. As explained in Duchenne et al. (2014), saturations can be calculated using
several approaches making different assumptions. For the two WAG experiments, we considered that measured volumes of
oil at reservoir conditions were not reliable for saturation calculations, because of oil swelling with CO2. Cross-checking
material balance results and X-Ray results was also key in determining the right approach for material balance calculations.
Permeability to water was measured at the end of each WAG experiments, after a series of rate bumps (Table 7). Very
low values were obtained, suggesting a water permeability reduction during cyclic injections.

Table 7 - Experimental results exp. #2 and exp. #3 (WAG injections)

Exp Exp Gas Brine Sor Sor Sgr Sgr RF RF RF RF Kw Krw

# type BT BT MB XR MB XR MB strip sweep XR end end
(PV) (PV) (s.u.) (s.u.) (s.u.) (s.u.) (%) (%) (%) (%) (mD) (%)
2 WAG 0.71 0.8 13.1 14.8 31.9 29.7 84.7 12 72.7 80 0.4 4
(CO2 first) +/- 0.07 +/- 1
3 WAG 0.82 0.6 8.7 9.5 36.3 33.8 90 10.6 79.4 87.5 0.4 3
(Brine first) +/- 0.06 +/- 1

The ternary diagram Figure 7 shows the three-phase saturation trajectories for all three experiments. WAG experiments
achieve equal (WAG CO2 first) or lower (WAG brine first) Sorm that pure CO2 injections. Figure 8 and Figure 9 show the
recovery for all three experiments expressed as a function of pore volume injected and as a function of pore volume of CO2
injected, respectively. One can see that WAG experiments perform better than pure CO2 injection. Both WAG achieve faster
recovery than pure CO2 injection. For instance, exp. #1 (continuous injections), exp. #2 (WAG CO2 first), exp. #3 (WAG
brine first) reach 80% of recovery after 1.57, 1 and 0.87 PV injected, respectively. Exp. #3 (WAG brine first) also achieves
greater recovery than pure CO2 injection with RFExp. #3 = 90% and RFgasflood = 84.8%. This lower performance of CO2 flood is
partly due to the strong segregation of fluids taking place on the 5cm diameter core, as shown Figure 10. Average oil
saturation ranges from 8 s.u. for the top X-Ray cross-section (Figure 10 (a)) to 19 s.u. for the bottom X-Ray cross-section
(Figure 10 (c)). This effect was not observed on WAG corefloods. Another explanation is the greater sweeping efficiency
obtained for both WAG injections. Over 72% of oil was recovered from sweeping during WAG injections and only 58.8%
was recovered from sweeping for the gasflood. Gas breakthrough is slowed down by water during both WAG injections. CO2
breakthrough occurs at 0.3, 0.71 and 0.82 PV injected for exp. #1 (gasflood), exp. #2 (WAG CO2 first) and exp. #3 (WAG
brine first), respectively.
Another important parameter when studying microscopic efficiency of WAG injection is the injectivity index. The
injectivity index can be defined as the flow conductance of the fluids from injector into the formation and is directly linked to
the differential pressure measured across the core, assuming no capillary end-effects, with the following relation:
I Q/∆P
with Q the injection rate and ΔP the differential pressure across the core. During our WAG corefloods, injection rate was set
to a constant value of 7 cc/h. Therefore, injectivity is inversely proportional to the differential pressure. Figure 11 shows the
differential pressure across the core measured during each experiment. During both WAG experiments, differential pressure
increases with injection cycles and stabilizes after 5 cycles to reach 5-6 bars during injection of water slugs and 1-2 bars
during injection of gas slugs. This has to be compared to the 12 mbars of differential pressure during the first gasflood of the
continuous injections (Figure 11 (a)) and to the 550 mbars of differential pressure during tertiary water injection (Figure 11
(a)). Therefore, injectivity during WAG injections is reduced by a factor 100 (i.e. 1200 mbars/12 mbars) for the gas injection,
when comparing with a secondary process and by a factor 10 (i.e. 5500 mbars/550 mbars) for the water injection when
comparing with a tertiary process.

Conclusions

An efficient methodology and experimental design was used to perform several CO2 WAG corefloods at reservoir conditions
on carbonate cores, with light oil from a Middle East field. Results obtained emphasis the importance of using a robust data
acquisition system to monitor both produced fluids and in-situ three-phase saturations, to determine key reservoir parameters
for WAG projects. The monitoring used proved useful to acquire high quality data and to conclude on the following points:
 WAG experiments performed better than pure CO2 injection thanks to a greater sweeping efficiency and a slower gas
breakthrough.
6 SPE-169658-MS

 Strong hysteresis was observed on the gas phase with a reduction in gas relative permeability between 2-phase and 3-
phase flows and an increase in gas trapping with injection cycles (variation in Land trapping coefficient).
 Water permeability reduction was also observed on WAG experiments.
 During WAG injections, high level of differential pressure across the core were reached, reducing injectivity by one
order of magnitude for water injection and by two orders of magnitude for gas injection compared to secondary and
tertiary injections.
Significant work was conducted on PVT modeling to characterize CO2-oil phase behavior with great precision. From the data
gathered, a consistent simulation work can now be carried out to fully interprete coreflood experiments. This will be
presented in future publications.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank TOTAL for the support and the permission to publish this paper.

Nomenclature

PV Pore volume
Φ Porosity
Ki Permeability of phase i
Kri Relative permeability of phase i
Swi Initial water saturation
Soi Initial oil saturation
Pe=L/αL Peclet number, with L, the length of the core and αL, the longitudinal dispersivity
Nc Capillary number
Si Saturation of phase i
So MB Oil saturation calculated from material balance
So XR Oil saturation calculated from X-Ray measurements
Sorm Residual saturation of oil after miscible flood
Swr Residual water saturation
Sgr Residual gas saturation
Bo Oil volume factor
Bc Condensate volume factor
Vcond(lab) Cumulated production of condensate at laboratory conditions
Vo(P,T) Cumulated production of oil at reservoir conditions
Vo(lab) Cumulated production of oil at laboratory conditions
RF Recovery factor
BT Breakthrough
I Injectivity index
Q Injection rate
ΔP Differential pressure across the core

References

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Paper SPE 151126 presented at the SPE EOR Conference at Oil and Gas West Asia, Muscat, Oman, 16-18 April.

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124538 presented at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 4-9 October.

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Conference and Exhibition, Houston, USA, 3-6 October.

Bijeljic, B.R., Muggeridge, A.H., Blunt, M.J. 2002. Effect of Composition on Waterblocking for Multicomponent Gasfloods. Paper SPE
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Egermann, P., Vizika, O., Dallet, L., Requin, C., Sonier, F. 2000. Hysteresis in Three-Phase Flow: Experiments, Modeling and Reservoir
SPE-169658-MS 7

Simulations. Paper SPE 65127 presented at the EIA Worshop & Symposium on Enhanced Oil Recovery, Edinburgh, UK, 20-22
September.

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Models Using Laboratory Hysteresis Data. Paper SPE 84903 presented at the SPE International Oil Recovery Conference in Asia Pasific,
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 20-21 October.

Land C.S. 1968. Calculation of Imbibition Relative Permeability for Two and Three-Phase Flow from Rock Properties. SPEJ, 149-156.

Larsen, J.A., Skauge, A. 1998. Methodology for Numerical Simulation with Cycle-Dependent Relative Permeabilities, SPE 38456, SPE
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1.6 60
Volume liquid / Initial volume liquid (v/v)

Experiment Experiment
55

Mass liquid/ Initial mass liquid(v/v)
1.4
Model 50 Model
45
1.2
40
1 35
30
0.8
25

0.6 20
15
0.4 10
0 1 2 3 4 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Mol of CO2 injected in 1 mol of oil Mol of CO2 injected in 1 mol of oil
(a) (b)
Figure 1 - Oil swelling and stripping with CO2. (a) MCT experiment. (b) Supercritical fluid extraction.

0.89 450

0.87 400
Saturation pressure (bar)

350
Liquid density (g/cc)

0.85
300
0.83 250

0.81 200
150
0.79
Experiment 100 Experiment
0.77 50
Model Model
0.75 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5
Mol of CO2 injected in 1 mol of oil Mol of CO2 injected in 1 mol of oil
(a) (b)
Figure 2 - Experimental data and simulated data for the MCT experiment. (a) Liquid density. (b) Saturation pressure.

Figure 3 – Core flooding set-up.

8 SPE-169658-MS

1 Sw MB
0.9 Sg MB
So MB
0.8
Sg XR
0.7 So XR
Sw XR
Saturation

0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
PV injected

Figure 4 – Average saturations versus pore volume injected for exp. #1 (continuous injections). Darker curves correspond to
saturations estimated from material balance (MB) calculation. Lighter curves correspond to saturations estimated through X-
Ray (XR) measurements.

1.0 1.0

0.8 0.8

0.6 0.6
Krw
Krg

0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2

0.0 0.0
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8
Sg Sw
(a ) (b)
 

Figure 5 –Relative permeability endpoints measured during exp. #1 (continuous injections). (a) Gas relative permeability. (b)
Water relative permeability.

0.4
Exp #1: 1st cycle
0.35
Exp #1: 2nd cycle 
0.3
0.25 Land = 5
Sgr (v/v)

0.2 Land = 2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
Sgi (v/v)

Figure 6 – Gas trapping from material balance during exp. #1 (continuous injections).
SPE-169658-MS 9

100% 0% 100% 0%

Sg So Sg So

0% 100% 0% 100%
100% Sw 0% 100% Sw 0%
(a) (b)
100% 0%

Sg So

0% 100%
100% Sw 0%
(c)
Figure 7 – Ternary diagram of saturation changes calculated from material balance for all three experiments. (a), (b) and (c)
are ternary diagram of exp. #1 (Continuous injections), exp. #2 (WAG injection starting with CO2) and exp. #3 (WAG
injection starting with brine), respectively. The blue areas are the initial water saturations.

100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
Recovery

50% Exp #1 (Gazflood)
40% Exp #2 (WAG CO2 first)
30%
Exp #3 (WAG Brine first)
20%
10%
0%
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
PV injected

Figure 8 – Recovery factor as a function of pore volume of fluid injected calculated for all three experiments.
10 SPE-169658-MS

100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
Recovery

Exp #1 (Gazflood)
50%
40% Exp #2 (WAG CO2 first)
30%
Exp #3 (WAG Brine first)
20%
10%
0%
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
PV CO2 injected

Figure 9 – Recovery factor as a function of pore volume of CO2 injected calculated for all three experiments.

100%
Saturation

Sg
So
Sw
0%
0 50 140 230 320 410
Core length (mm)
(a)
100%
Saturation

Sg
So
Sw
0%
0 50 140 230 320 410
Core length (mm)

(b)
100%
Saturation

Sg
So
Sw
0%
0 50 140 230 320 410
Core length (mm)

(c)
Figure 10 – In situ X-Ray saturations for exp. #1 (continuous injections), at the end of CO2 flood. (a), (b), (c), Saturations on
the top, middle and bottom cross-sections, respectively. Top and bottom cross-sections are acquired 1 cm above and 1 cm
below the middle cross-section.
SPE-169658-MS 11

7000 30
DP Rates
6000 25
5000
20

Rates (cc/h)
DP (mbar)

4000
15
3000
10
2000
1000 5

0 0
0 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32
PV injected
(a)
7 000
6 000
5 000
DP (mbar)

4 000
3 000
2 000
1 000
0
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5
PV injected
(b)
7000
6000
5000
DP (mbar)

4000
3000
2000
1000
0
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5
PV injected
(c)
Figure 11 – Differential pressure measured across the core for all three experiments. (a) Differential pressure and injection
rates during exp. #1 (continuous injections). (b) and (c) are differential pressure during exp. #2 (WAG starting with CO2) and
exp. #3 (WAG starting with brine), respectively. For both WAG experiments injection rate was set to 7 cc/h. Red and blue
areas are gas and water injection phase, respectively.