Analyzing The Effect Of Wettability On Oil Recovery From A Pore-Level Perspective Using Numerical Simulation

Wettability is an important reservoir parameter that controls many aspects of oil displacement by water. Rocks can be water-wet, oil-wet or neutrally-wet, but most real systems are mixed-wet. The wettability of the reservoir affects the dominant displacement process at the pore-scale level; which greatly affects the residual oil saturation and the final oil recovery.

In this study, a numerical model was built by ECLIPSE 100 to simulate waterflooding through water-wet, oil-wet and mixed-wet systems. The wettability in the model was manipulated by changing the relative permeability parameters and the output produced compared, on plots, the residual oil saturation and the oil recovery factor with respect to pore volume injected for the three wettability systems studied. The results, which agrees with other literature studying displacement at a pore-scale level, shows that mixed-wet conditions produced the highest oil recovery and lowest residual oil saturation, whereas the water-wet conditions yielded the lowest oil recovery and the highest residual oil saturation.