Impacts of Mixed‐Wettability on Brine Drainage and Supercritical CO₂ Storage Efficiency in a 2.5‐D Heterogeneous Micromodel

Abstract

Abstract Geological carbon storage (GCS) involves unstable drainage processes, the formation of patterns in a morphologically unstable interface between two fluids in a porous medium during drainage. The unstable drainage processes affect CO 2 storage efficiency and plume distribution and can be greatly complicated by the mixed‐wet nature of rock surfaces common in hydrocarbon reservoirs where supercritical CO 2 (scCO 2 ) is used in enhanced oil recovery. We performed scCO 2 injection (brine drainage) experiments at 8.5 MPa and 45°C in heterogeneous micromodels, two mixed‐wet with varying water‐ and intermediate‐wet patches, and one water‐wet. The flow regime changes from capillary fingering through crossover to viscous fingering in the micromodels of the same pore geometry but different wetting surfaces at displacement rates with logCa (capillary number) increasing from −8.1 to −4.4. While the mixed‐wet micromodel with uniformly distributed intermediate‐wet patches yields ~0.15 scCO 2 saturation increase at both capillary fingering and crossover flow regimes ( −8.1 ≤ logCa ≤ − 6.1 ), the one heterogeneous wetting to scCO 2 results in ~0.09 saturation increase only at the crossover flow regime ( −7.1 ≤ logCa ≤ − 6.1 ). The interconnected flow paths in the former are quantified and compared to the channelized scCO 2 flow through intermediate‐wet patches in the latter by topological analysis. At logCa > − 6.1 (near well), the effects of wettability and pore geometry are suppressed by strong viscous force. Both scCO 2 saturation and distribution suggest the importance of wettability on CO 2 storage efficiency and plume shape in reservoirs and capillary leakage through caprock at GCS conditions.