Water Imbibition into Berea

Water Imbibition into Berea: Saturation Changes Were Insensitive to Berea Pore Size.

Water saturation at Sor in the imaged region in Berea was 81.6% (Table 2). The average pore saturation was not sensitive to pore size (solid curve in Figure 10). For all size ranges, note the large number of pores with high water saturations; 39.4% of the pores had Sw> 95%. During the transition from Swr to Sor in Berea (Figure 11 and compare Figures 9 and 10), pores in all detected size ranges experienced significant gains in water saturation (averaging 65.6%). Pore size did not appear to significantly influence the extent of the transition.

Figure 10—Berea @ Sor before gel.
Figure 11—Changes in Berea: Swr to Sor.

In Figures 9 and 10, the solid curves suggest that the average water saturation in the largest pores were greater than in pores of intermediate size. However, this observation is probably an artifact resulting from the presence of very few large pores. The fortuitous saturations in the few large pores may have skewed the far right portions of the curves in Figures 9 and 10.