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A Numerical Study of the Critical Gas Saturation in a Porous Medium

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Abstract

We use pore‐network simulations to study the dependence of the critical gas saturation in solution‐gas drive processes on the geometric parameters of the porous medium. We show that for a variety of growth regimes (including global and local percolation, instantaneous and sequential nucleation, and mass‐transfer driven processes), the critical gas saturation, Sgc, follows a power‐law scaling with the final nucleation fraction (fraction of sites activated), fq. For 3‐D processes, this relation reads Sgc∼fq0.16, indicating a sensitive dependence of Sgc to fq at very small values of fq.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Petroleum Engineering Program, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90089‐1211, U.S.A

    C. Du & Y. C. Yortsos

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  1. C. Du
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  2. Y. C. Yortsos
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Du, C., Yortsos, Y.C. A Numerical Study of the Critical Gas Saturation in a Porous Medium. Transport in Porous Media 35, 205–225 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006582222356

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