The migration of Colloids as a Cause of Deterioration of Permeability in Porous Sandstones during Laboratory Investigations

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Abstract

Rock permeability is not a constant value, it depends on many factors, including the presence of small particles in the fluids and porous medium – colloids that can clog pore channels and reduce permeability. The effect of natural colloids migration, as a rule, is not taken into account when determining the dependencies of permeability on effective pressure, this phenomenon is often ignored by many authors and interpreted as a result of the influence of other factors. The reason for insufficient attention to the fact of mobilization and migration of natural colloids is the difficulty of identifying this phenomenon. It was found that with a change in the effective pressure in the initial period of oil production in real conditions, permeability can decrease more than according to laboratory studies. With a small change in effective pressure, when the probability of a decrease and hysteresis of permeability due to deformation of the porous reservoir is extremely small, the dependencies of permeability on the amount of oil produced were established. This fact confirms the probability of the influence of migration of natural colloids on the decrease in permeability and emphasizes the need to study it. The aim of the work is to study the effect of colloid migration on the permeability of porous sandstones with changes in the fluid injection rate and pore pressure. The article presents the methodology and results of core filtration tests taking into account the decrease in the permeability of the porous medium caused by the migration of natural colloids during fluid injection. The conditions of filtration tests exclude other permeability factors, such as creep and chemical mobilization of colloids. The results obtained demonstrate the dependence of permeability on colloid migration with changes in the fluid injection rate and pore pressure. Filtration studies of core samples using the proposed technique showed that the permeability of the cores decreases only with fluid movement inside the samples, which is direct evidence of pore clogging due to the migration of natural colloids. It was found that a decrease in pore pressure leads to a more intense decrease in permeability during injection, which indicates additional mobilization of colloids. Porous media with higher permeability are less sensitive to colloid migration and changes in pore pressure.

Keywords

colloid migrationporous medialaboratory core testscore floodingpermeabilitypermeability hysteresiseffective pressurewell testing

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Article information

Published
31 October 2024
Issue date
31 October 2024
Issue
Vol. 24, No. 4 (2024)
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