IMPROVED COMPUTATIONAL-PROCEDURE FOR RETENTION RELATIONS OF IMMISCIBLE FLUIDS USING PRESSURE CELLS

The capillary pressure-saturation relation, or the capillary pressure head-volumetric fluid content relation, is of widespread interest in m odeling and predicting multiphase fluid how. A common procedure to det ermine this relation is to use a pressure cell and assume uniform dist ributions of capillary pressure and volumetric fluid contents at stati c equilibrium. The pressure cell method, however, yields inaccurate re sults for certain combinations of multiphase fluids and porous media. The sensitivity analysis In this study shows that the pressure cell he ight, the positions of the pressure measuring devices, which can coinc ide with the in- and outflow ports, and the relative density differenc e of the fluids, can give rise to considerable errors in the determina tion of capillary pressure head-volumetric fluid content relations by the standard procedure using pressure cells. me, therefore, propose a curve-fitting method that considers nonuniform distributions of capill ary pressure and volumetric fluid content of multiphase fluids. The me thod uses the same input data as commonly used procedures.