Steady-State Relative Permeability Measurements of Tight and Shale Rocks Considering Capillary End Effect

Abstract

Relative permeability (k_r) data are the key factors for describing the behaviour of the multi-phase flow in porous media. During the k_r measurements of low-permeability rocks, high capillary pressure can cause a significant liquid hold-up at the core outlet. This liquid hold-up, which is known as capillary end effect (CEE), is the main difficulty for laboratory measurements of relative permeability (k_r) for tight and shale rocks. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to correct the CEE during the steady-state relative permeability (SS-k_r) measurements. The integrity of the proposed method is evaluated by a set of artificially generated data and the experimental SS-k_r data of an Eagle Ford shale sample. It is shown that accurate k_r data can be obtained using the proposed technique. This technique can be used to estimate reliable k_r data without any saturation profile measurement equipment, such as CT scan or MRI.

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