Pore Scale Investigation of Supercritical and Liquid CO2 Displacement of Water in A Dual-Permeability Pore Network Micromodel

Permeability contrasts exist in multilayer geological formations under consideration for carbon sequestration. To improve our understanding of immiscible displacements in heterogeneous formations at the pore-scale, liquid and supercritical CO2 (LCO2 and scCO2) - water displacement was imaged in real-time in a pore network micromodel with two distinct permeability zones, under 9 MPa pressure, and temperatures up to 41 °C. Due to the low viscosity ratio (logM = -1.1, -1.2), unstable displacement occurred at all injection rates over two orders of magnitude. CO2 displaced water only in the high permeability zone at low injection rates with the mechanism shifting from capillary fingering to viscous fingering with increasing flow rate. At high injection rates, CO2 displaced water in the low permeability zone with capillary fingering as the dominant mechanism. CO2 saturation (SCO2) as a function of injection rate was quantified using fluorescent microscopy. In all experiments, more than 50% of CO2 resided in the active flowpaths, and this fraction increased as displacement transitioned from capillary to viscous fingering. A continuum-scale two-phase flow model with independently determined fluid and hydraulic parameters was used to predict liquid CO2 saturation (SCO2) in the dual-permeability field. Agreement with the micromodel experiments was obtained for low injection rates. However, the numerical model does not account for the unstable viscous fingering processes observed experimentally at higher rates and hence overestimated SCO2.