CORE FLOODING (NO3.7a)

The core flooding facilities are strategical located within the SINTEF Reservoir laboratory together with pVT facilities (ECCSEL facility NO3.7c) and support equipment for core cleaning, measurements of porosity and absolute permeability, low pressure core flooding and porous-plate measurements for drainage and imbibition.

The Reservoir laboratory offers a wide range of services and special research-oriented experiments. Some of the more standard experiments and tests are:

• Two or three phase steady-state core flooding with X-ray in-situ saturation measurements
• Unsteady-state core flooding with X-ray in-situ saturation measurements
• Migration and diffusion type of experiments for fluid transport in porous media.
• Core flooding experiments for measurements of displacement efficiencies (EOR, etc.)
• Capillary pressure measurements, including capillary entry pressure
• Porous plate experiments

The facility has flexible set-ups of core flooding rigs which may easily be adapted according to specific needs related to the porous medium (sand packs, core sizes, etc.) and flooding conditions (volume rates, type of fluids, fluid phases, pressure, and temperature). The laboratory is conducting research within multiphase flow processes in porous media. This work is mostly related to CO₂ storage, enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes including CO₂ injection for EOR as well as studies of CO₂ flow and transport processes. There is a special interest in improvements of in-situ CO₂ saturation measurement techniques to reveal new information from core flooding experiments. The core laboratory is working in close connection with the fluid laboratory, and most core flooding projects will need fluid analysis to be included.

The X-ray in-situ flooding apparatus is contained within a limited footprint of 2 x 3 meters. Due to low scattering and lead shielded cabinet the facility is located within the centre of our laboratory without any additional shielding measures being necessary. This gives easy access to infrastructure and auxiliary equipment such as pumps and equipment for online analysis.  An X-ray source of 80 kV offers faster scanning times and better resolution compared to more conventional gamma sources. Typical scanning times is about 15 minutes for a 200 mm core sample. The setup also includes a lightweight carbon composite core holder which allows an easy and effective core mounting process. Wetted parts are all in HC-276 and 316 SS, which are highly compatible with most fluids and gases applied in industry, including CO₂ and reservoir fluids. With minor modifications this also applies for hydrogen at reservoir conditions.