Two-phase bitumen/water relative permeability at different temperatures and SAGD pressure: Experimental study

•Design of a new experimental rig and improved experimental techniques for bitumen-water relative permeability tests.•New experimental data of bitumen/water relative permeability over a wide range of temperature.•The contact angle and bitumen-water interfacial tension measurements over a wide temperature range.•Experimental evidence to show that bitumen-water relative permeability changes significantly with temperature. The heavy oil or bitumen trapped in subterranean formations in Canada and North America can be effectively produced and recovered using thermal enhanced oil recovery (TEOR) techniques, especially steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) processes. Heating the formation to a high temperature greatly reduces the oil viscosity, which increases the oil mobility in the reservoir. In the SAGD process, the steam injected through a long horizontal well creates a steam saturated zone, called steam chamber, around the well that gradually expands laterally and vertically within the reservoir. The edge of the growing steam chamber is where the oil is displaced by the steam. There is a large temperature gradient in the oil drainage zone with steam temperature at the edge of the steam chamber and close to the original reservoir temperature on the other side of the drainage zone. The fluid flow behavior, which is controlled by relative permeability, can be sensitive to the temperature in this transition zone. The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of temperature on two-phase bitumen/water relative permeability of sand over a wide range of temperature from 70 to 220 °C. In the present study, isothermal displacement experiments were conducted with an advanced experimental rig under the confining pressure of 1400 psi using Athabasca bitumen, deionized water, and clean silica sand at six different temperatures. All experiments were repeated to ensure that the results are repeatable and reliable. The JBN (Johnson, Bossler and Neumann) method was used to obtain the two-phase relative permeability. The effect of temperature on relative permeability for the bitumen system was found to be substantial and should be accounted for in simulation of SAGD processes. The endpoint water relative permeability can increase by two orders of magnitude in going from the reservoir temperature to the steam temperature. The endpoint oil relative permeability also increases, albeit more modestly and the residual oil saturation decreases. Besides the relative perme