Estimation of Gas-Condensate Relative Permeability Using a Lattice Boltzmann Modeling Approach

Predicting well deliverability loss due to condensate banking requires imbibition gas/oil relative permeability as a function of capillary number. These measurements can be difficult to conduct and are often unavailable. It would be of benefit if reasonable estimates of the imbibition relative permeability can be obtained from commonly available drainage data. We use a multiphase lattice Boltzmann method to compute drainage and imbibition gas/oil relative permeability for a Berea Sandstone core. The computations are done on a 3D digital pore space of the core constructed for micro-CT-scan images. The imbibition calculations are for both displacement and dropout processes, and for a range of capillary numbers. These results are then compared to experimental measurements reported in literature as a function of k_rg/k_ro and capillary number N_c, and they showed agreement with experimental results for different sandstones.