(169b) Phase Behavior in Nanoporous Media and Its Impact on Hydrocarbon Recovery

It has been well recognized that production from liquid-rich shale (LRS) reservoirs behaves very differently from conventional reservoirs, and one of the potential causes has been widely attributed to effects of pore–confinement on phase behavior and mass transfer kinetics. The underlying physics behind multiphase fluid flow in unconventional tight reservoir has not yet been fully understood, and the effects of pore-confinement have been mostly assessed by numerical modeling/simulation in the literature.

This paper reports our laboratory measurements of hydrocarbon phase transition and mass transfer kinetics in nano-pore media for both single-component and multi-component hydrocarbon systems. The experimental results confirmed the significant impact of pore-confinement on gas/oil phase transition and flow in nano-pores, and the multiphase flow dynamic is examined to elucidate the fundamental physics involved. This offers a more realistic description of pertinent mechanisms for hydrocarbon recovery from tight LRS formations and provides data for validating numerical modeling methodologies, which will enable us to predict and optimize production performance of LRS reservoirs.