Comput Geosci (2012) 16:409–422
DOI 10.1007/s10596-012-9280-8
ORIGINAL PAPER
Using vorticity to quantify the relative importance
of heterogeneity, viscosity ratio, gravity and diffusion
on oil recovery
Bilal Rashid · Astor-Lonice Bal · Glyn J. J. Williams ·
Ann H. Muggeridge
Received: 31 January 2011 / Accepted: 18 January 2012 / Published online: 18 February 2012
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
Abstract The vorticity of the displacement velocity is
used to derive dimensionless numbers that can be used
to quantify the relative importance of viscosity ratio,
gravity, diffusion/dispersion and permeability hetero-
geneity on secondary hydrocarbon recovery. Using this
approach, a new objective measure of the impact of
permeability and porosity heterogeneity on reservoir
performance is obtained. This is used, in conjunction
with other dimensionless numbers, to analyse the rel-
ative impact of heterogeneity, buoyancy effects, mo-
bility ratio and dispersion on breakthrough time and
recovery at 1 pore volume injected during first contact
miscible gas injection. This is achieved using results
obtained from detailed simulation of miscible displace-
ments through a range of geologically realistic reservoir
models. This study goes some way towards developing
a unified mathematical framework to determine under
which flow conditions reservoir heterogeneity becomes
more important than other physical processes. We pro-
pose that comparison of these dimensionless numbers
can be used to identify the key factors controlling
B. Rashid (B) · A. H. Muggeridge
Imperial College London, London, UK
e-mail: bilal.rashid@imperial.ac.uk
A. H. Muggeridge
e-mail: a.muggeridge@imperial.ac.uk
A.-L. Bal · G. J. J. Williams
BP Exploration, Chertsey Road Sunbury-on-Thames,
Middlesex, TW16 7LN UK
A.-L. Bal
e-mail: astor-lonice.bal@bp.com
G. J. J. Williams
e-mail: glyn.williams@bp.com
recovery and thus assist the engineer in determining ap-
propriate enhanced oil recovery techniques to improve
recovery.
Keywords Heterogeneity · Ranking · Dimensionless
numbers · EOR
1 Introduction
The fluid dynamics of oil recovery in the subsurface is
governed by reservoir heterogeneity, the applied pres-
sure gradient, the viscosity ratio of the oil and displac-
ing fluid, their density difference and diffusive effects
(molecular diffusion/advective dispersion in miscible
displacements and capillary pressure in immiscible dis-
placements) [37]. The relative importance of these
mechanisms and their interaction with heterogeneity
often determines the efficiency of a secondary or ter-
tiary oil recovery process. Despite this intricate link
between flow regime and heterogeneity, there is still no
unified mathematical framework to determine under
which flow conditions reservoir heterogeneity becomes
more significant than these other factors.
Geological heterogeneity in the reservoir generally
manifests itself as premature breakthrough of the dis-
placing fluid at the production wells and poor areal
sweep. Permeability heterogeneity varies on every
length scale, from the millimetres to the kilometres, and
every scale has the potential to affect recovery [28].
Further, recent work has shown that different styles
of reservoir heterogeneity and different depositional
environments affect recovery in different ways [6, 11,
22, 24, 56, 58, 60].
410
In homogeneous reservoirs, the applied or resultant
pressure gradient combined with viscosity differences
can lead to early breakthrough and low sweep
efficiencies as a result of unstable viscous fingering in
miscible displacements, or a low shock front saturation
and long rarefaction in immiscible displacements (e.g.
[3, 7, 23, 26, 59] and many others).
Gravity will tend to cause fluids of different density
to segregate, often with a reduction in recovery. In the
presence of viscosity differences [7, 15], this may result
in an even lower sweep efficiency. Early breakthrough
also results from the effects of capillary pressure and
physical dispersion/diffusion as both tend to spread
out the front/interface between the displacing fluid and
the oil [40].
In many cases, interactions between heterogeneity
and these processes will change the behaviour of the
displacement, sometimes for the better. For example,
viscous fingering may be stabilised by gravity [16, 25] or
physical diffusion/dispersion [9, 23], whilst channelling
through heterogeneities may be mitigated by gravity
(e.g. during water injection into an upwards coarsening
sequence, [41]) or diffusion/dispersion [31, 57]. How-
ever, without a detailed flow simulation using a fine-
scale geological model, the combined effects of flow
regime and heterogeneity are difficult to estimate.
Understanding the interactions between heterogene-
ity and flow regime is further complicated by the in-
herent uncertainty in the details of the heterogeneity
distribution in the subsurface. The most common way
of evaluating the impact of this uncertainty on reser-
voir performance is to use Monte Carlo simulation,
performing detailed simulations of recovery in multiple
realisations of the reservoir heterogeneity. However,
such large-scale detailed flow simulation studies are
generally limited by computational constraints: There
simply is not enough time to perform a statistically
meaningful number of simulations.
1.1 Dimensionless numbers in reservoir engineering
The relative importance of viscous, capillary, gravity
and dispersive effects in homogeneous reservoirs is usu-
ally characterised in terms of dimensionless numbers
obtained through dimensional [4] or inspectional [48]
analysis of the equations of motion and mass conserva-
tion. Most ignore heterogeneity and indicate only the
prevailing flow regime in the reservoir (see [15, 19, 38,
52]), although the majority of these numbers depend
upon reservoir permeability. Recent work to consider
the impact of heterogeneity in terms of the flow regime
in reservoirs has been in the field of upscaling where the
choice of upscaling method will depend on flow regime.
Comput Geosci (2012) 16:409–422
Coll et al. [11] and Stephen et al. [54] independently
introduced the concept of local dimensionless numbers
and used them to examine the impact of both gravity
and capillary pressure on waterfloods.
Dimensionless heterogeneity indices have been de-
veloped in an attempt to quantify the impact of hetero-
geneity on oil recovery without the need for detailed
multi-phase flow simulation. Various such measures
exist: Static measures typically consider the statisti-
cal properties of the permeability and porosity data
sets (see [1, 2, 17, 30, 34, 42, 50, 59]). More complex
measures evaluate the interaction of flow with hetero-
geneity, such as Koval’s heterogeneity factor [29] for
miscible flow, the field-scale dispersivity proposed by
Arya et al. [2] and the dynamic Lorenz coefficient and
other measures calculated from streamline simulations
[53]. Either these measures exclude flow information
and so neglect the impact of flow regime or they require
detailed flow simulation and hence require the very
process heterogeneity measures are designed to avoid.
In this study, we have used the mathematical formal-
ism developed by Heller [23], for the study of miscible
flows in porous media, to introduce a new objective
measure of the impact of permeability heterogeneity
on reservoir performance. This formulation, based on
the vorticity of displacement velocity in the reservoir,
also enables us to study the relative importance of
heterogeneity, viscous, gravity and dispersive effects in
terms of the mobility ratio, the dimensionless viscous-
to-gravity ratio of Crane et al. [13] and the Peclet
number.
We use the new measure of heterogeneity and re-
lated dimensionless numbers to demonstrate when per-
meability heterogeneity is important and under which
conditions it may be ignored. We restrict ourselves to
miscible flows and variations in fluid viscosity, density
and dispersivity.
2 Formalism
Let us examine how the velocity field changes in a
reservoir in response to heterogeneity. In single-phase
flow, the velocity field will be controlled by the location
of wells (formally, sources and sinks) and permeability
heterogeneity. We shall consider how changes in the
velocity field affect an interface that is initially per-
pendicular to the velocities at some reference location.
Changes to the velocity field over small distances will
result in perturbations to the interface. These can be de-
scribed in terms of the rate of rotation of the interface,
i.e. vorticity. The subsequent non-linear growth of these
perturbations in a multi-phase or first contact miscible