Analyzing the Representative Elementary Volume for Estimating Petrophysical and Two-phase Parameters in water-flooding Process using Digital Rock Physics

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Department of Petroleum Engineering, AmirKabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

10.22078/pr.2024.5253.3332

Abstract

Determining the representative elementary volume (REV) is crucial for accurately assessing the petrophysical properties of porous samples. This study used digital rock physics methods on a sandstone sample to establish the REV. The process involved extracting 10 subsamples from the original sample using image processing techniques like denoising and segmentation. Petrophysical and two-phase flow properties such as effective porosity, total porosity, tortuosity, effective permeability, relative permeability, residual oil saturation, maximum water relative permeability, intersection points in relative permeability curves for water and oil, as well as the average pore radius, average throat radius, and coordination number were calculated for each sub-sample using image processing and pore network modeling. The REV was estimated to be around 6003, which helps in improving modeling accuracy and reducing costs and time in studies. This highlights the importance of digital rock physics in determining REV for further analysis.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

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Journal of Petroleum Research
Volume 34, 1403-2 - Serial Number 135
Special Issues on Water-based EOR
July and August 2024
Pages 91-101

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