Steady-State Relative Permeability Measurements of Tight and Shale Rocks Considering Capillary End Effect

Relative permeability (k(r)) data are the key factors for describing the behaviour of the multi-phase flow in porous media. During the k(r) measurements of low-permeability rocks, high capillary pressure can cause a significant liquid hold-up at the core outlet. This liquid hold-up, which is known as capillary end effect (CEE), is the main difficulty for laboratory measurements of relative permeability (k(r)) for tight and shale rocks. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to correct the CEE during the steady-state relative permeability (SS-k(r)) measurements. The integrity of the proposed method is evaluated by a set of artificially generated data and the experimental SS-k(r) data of an Eagle Ford shale sample. It is shown that accurate k(r) data can be obtained using the proposed technique. This technique can be used to estimate reliable k(r) data without any saturation profile measurement equipment, such as CT scan or MRI.