Analysis of Counter-Current Imbibition Including Gravity Force through Finite Difference Scheme

Spontaneous counter-current imbibition is one of the most important crude oil recovery processes in water-wet fractured reservoirs with low matrix permeability. This paper presents a numerical modeling of imbibition process when water is imbibed by capillarity and gravity forces in to an oil saturated vertical cube core to examine the effect of gravity force on spontaneous imbibition. In this modeling, It is assumed that imbibition is a diffusion process. Finite difference implicit method was used to solve the spontaneous imbibition equations. Accuracy of the modeling is investigated with comparison of the modeling results and the experimental data.

Keywords:

Spontaneous imbibition , Counter-current imbibition , Oil recovery , gravity force