Research Article

Energy Exploration & Exploitation

2019, Vol. 37(3) 1–32
Analytical solution of ! The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0144598719842335
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effect of miscibility with

constant-pressure boundary

Lingyu Mu , Xinwei Liao, Zhiming Chen,

Jiandong Zou, Hongyang Chu and Rongtao Li

Abstract
This paper presents an analytical solution of Buckley-Leverett equation for gas flooding with
constant-pressure boundary including the effect of miscibility on the viscosity and relative per-
meability. First, a relative permeability model and a viscosity model with consideration of misci-
bility are used to describe the variations of relative permeability and viscosity of oil and gas. Then,
based on the fractional-flow theory, the Buckley-Leverett equation for gas flooding with constant-
pressure boundary including the effect of miscibility is constructed and solved analytically. From
the analytical solution, the saturation and pressure profiles, the total volumetric flux and the
breakthrough time are determined. To verify the theory, the analytical solution is compared with
the numerical solution. The comparison shows that the analytical solution is in reasonable agree-
ment with numerical solution. Through the study on the influential factors, it can be concluded
that total volumetric flux is increasing with the increases of permeability and pressure and
decrease of gas viscosity. The increase of total volumetric flux accelerates breakthrough of the
injected gas. Furthermore, with the pressure increase, there are remarkable reduction in residual
oil saturation and improvement of relative permeability, resulting in higher gas saturation and oil
displacement efficiency. The analytical solution presented in this paper provides guidance on
analyzing the distribution of saturation and pressure profiles, predicting the gas production and
oil recovery efficiency of oil well.

College of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum (Beijing), Beijing, China

Corresponding author:
Lingyu Mu, China University of Petroleum (Beijing), Changping, Beijing 100249, China.
Email: lingyu_mu@foxmail.com

Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and
distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and
Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
2 Energy Exploration & Exploitation 0(0)

Keywords
Analytical solution, constant-pressure boundary, pressure profile, saturation profile, break-
through time

Introduction
For its remarkable achievement in oil recovery and storage capacity for the greenhouse
gases, the gas flooding technology has been attracting more and more concern and discus-
sion among the EOR methods (Kamali and Cinar, 2014; Zhao et al., 2016). The gas injec-
tion is divided into two categories, consisting of hydrocarbon gas injection, such as natural
gas and produced gas, and non-hydrocarbon gas injection, such as CO2, N2 and flue gas.
The injected gas not only dissolves into oil leading oil viscosity reduction, volumetric expan-
sion, and interfacial tension (IFT) reduction but also plays a role in dissolved gas drive
(Green and Willhite, 1998; Holm, 1986). The contribution of these mechanisms is different
for oil recovery under different reservoir and fluid condition (Klins, 1984). The primary
mechanism of gas injection is through mass transfer to reduce IFT and increase the misci-
bility of oil and gas, especially under high pressure (Sheng, 2013), which allows for the
residual oil in water flooding to be displaced and recovered.
The theory of fractional flow reveals the basic law of non-piston displacement for two-
phase flow, based on some indispensable and reasonable assumptions. The theory is gener-
alized, starting with the Buckley-Leverett theory for water flooding and has been applied to
various EOR methods, such as gas flooding and polymer flooding (Buckley and Leverett,
1942; Ehlig-Economides and Economides, 2010; Ghanbarnezhad and Lake, 2012; Hirasaki,
1981; Johansen et al., 2016; Pope, 1980). The theory involves one-dimensional flow of two
incompressible fluids in porous media. To easily obtain the analytical solution, necessary
and reasonable assumptions are made. Typically, the major assumptions are following: (1)
the porous media is homogeneous, isotropic, and isothermal, (2) dispersion of fluids is
negligible, (3) gravity and capillarity are negligible, (4) Darcy’s law is applied, (5) and a
continuous injection of constant composition is injected starting at time zero (Pope, 1980;
Rui et al., 2018). The fractional flow for the displacing fluid is the ratio of the volume flux of
the displacing fluid to the total volume flux; by substituting the Darcy’s Law into the volume
flux, the function of the fractional flow is determined. By substituting the function of the
fractional flow into the conservation equation, the new equation is known as Buckley–
Leverett equation. Afterwards, the front advance velocity, the breakthrough time and the
pressure and saturation profiles, indicators of sweep efficiency and oil recovery are deduced
with boundary conditions. Yortsos et al. presented a mathematical model of Buckley-
Leverett equation for water injection and obtained its analytical and numerical solution
(Yortsos et al., 1999). The log-log plot of water/oil ratio and time was used to predict the
well pattern and the relative permeability characteristics. Despite the simplification of the
mathematical model, the theory retains the key feature of the two-phase flow and provides a
highly valuable fundamental understanding of the displacement mechanisms. The theory
has the best reservoir engineering principles and practices and is efficient in precisely inves-
tigating the two-phase flow problems.
Many researchers have noticed the advantage of the theory of fractional flow in gas
flooding. Welge proposed a method to predict oil recovery for displacement of oil by
Mu et al. 3

enriched gas in a three-component, two-phase system (Welge et al., 1961). The method
considered the mechanisms of wet gas displacing oil, including volumetric expansion, vis-
cosity reduction and condensation of intermediate components in the gas. Wu et al. con-
structed a one-dimensional non-Darcy model of immiscible fluids, in which non-Darcy flow
was described with the Barree and Conway model (Wu et al., 2011). They derived its ana-
lytical solution and compared the Barree and Conway model with the Forchheimer model.
The results showed that the non-Darcy flow was dominated by the non-Darcy relations and
the parameters of the injection and production. Laforce and Johns (2005) established and
solved a three-phase four-component flow model in a one-dimensional porous medium by
the method of characteristics. It concluded that the presence of the three-phase region added
the complexity of the types of composition routes and profoundly affected on oil recovery,
which decreased with displacing-fluid enrichment. Johansen et al. (2005) presented a com-
prehensive analysis of mathematical model of four-component gas/oil displacement systems
in which components partition between two phases is governed by the geometry of a set of
equilibrium tie lines. The paper pointed out that when a system contained global triangular
structure, the wave analysis indicated that the shock and rarefaction surfaces coincided.
LaForce extended the parameterization and presented an analytical solution for flow of four
components in three phases with a realistic phase behavior model. The study of displace-
ments at pressures both below and above the minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) revealed
that solution structure for these displacements is qualitatively similar to that of the constant
K-value system (LaForce and Orr, 2009; Rezaei et al., 2013). Yang (2014) constructed a
mathematical model for carbonated water injection under constant pressure boundaries and
developed its numerical solution using the IMPES method. Through the model, they pre-
dicted the oil recovery, the saturation distribution and the pressure distribution from injec-
tor to producer.
Unfortunately, most of these studies have focused on the problems involved component
and phase, from two phases to three phases and from three components to four compo-
nents. However, the changed physical properties of fluids during the gas injection have been
overlooked in the development of analytical solution of Buckley-Leverett equation.
Actually, as the recovery mechanism stated previously, since the gas is injected into the
porous media, the complex interaction of oil and gas will lead to changes of physical prop-
erties such as viscosity and relative permeability, the key characteristics of multiphase seep-
age. In addition, most previous studies were based on the assumption of constant viscosity
and relative permeability. Meanwhile, it is noticed that the classical fractional-flow theory is
based on the assumption of constant volumetric flux. However, it is also common that the
injection pressure and the production pressure are both kept constant over time (Cui et al.,
2018b; Johansen et al., 2016). Under the constant-pressure boundary conditions, the volu-
metric flux is not constant and the volumetric flux at different time is unknown. Although
the one-dimensional two-phase flow model with constant-pressure boundary and dynamic
properties can be solved by the numerical method, the numerical simulation is time-
consuming, and there are numerical errors in the numerical discretization which may
result in physically unreal oscillation and wrong evaluation of oil reservoirs (Aziz, 1979;
He et al., 2017, 2018). Thus, in order to ensure the accuracy and improve the computational
efficiency, an analytical solution is indispensable (He et al., 2018).
The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytical solution of the Buckley-Leverett
equation for gas flooding with constant-pressure boundary conditions considering the
changed viscosity and the changed relative permeability. To describe the variation of relative
4 Energy Exploration & Exploitation 0(0)

permeability, we improve the analytical model proposed by Coats based on the

mechanism of the gas flooding. The relative permeability under different miscible
condition is determined by the interpolation method. Moreover, we introduce the Todd-
Longstaff model to calculate the effective viscosities of the oil and gas. The analytical
solution presented in this paper provides the saturation and pressure profile, the total vol-
umetric flux and the breakthrough time. Furthermore, the influence of permeability, gas
viscosity and pressure on process of gas flooding is fully discussed through the analyti-
cal results.

Mathematical model
Before the construction of the mathematical model of Buckley-Leverett equation, firstly we
study the varying physical properties of fluids. It has been pointed out that the relative
permeability and viscosity will change in the process of gas injection. Thus, it is necessary to
describe this variation with a proper model. There are increasingly sophisticated or efficient
methods to model the relative permeability and viscosity of fluids in the gas flooding.
To obtain the analytical solution of Buckley-Leverett equation, simple and practical
models with proper parameters are needed.

Relative permeability of gas/oil system

Relative permeability is one of the fundamental parameters and key characteristics of
multiphase seepage. In the process of CO2 flooding, the physical and chemical
properties of the fluids change drastically, especially at the interface (Cui et al., 2018a;
Orr, 2007). Under such condition, the influence of the thermodynamic condition on the
relative permeability is by no means negligible. IFT, generally through the capillary force,
plays an important role in determining the flow behavior of hydrocarbon fluids in
porous rocks.
Some scholars have carried out researches from a mathematical point of view to predict
relative permeability at different pressure. All of these models adopt an interpolation func-
tion to interpolate between base curves (at low pressure where the injected gas and the crude
oil are immiscible) and straight lines representing the miscible condition at high pressure
(generally higher than MMP). Coats first proposed the model of this type for individual-
phase relative permeability with the interpolation which is the function of IFT (Coats, 1980).
The model employs linear interpolation to modify the relative permeability curve at different
values of IFT, which is shown as follows

Kro ¼ Fk  Kimm
ro þ ð1  Fk Þ  Kro
mis
(1)

Krg ¼ Fk  Kimm
rg þ ð1  Fk Þ  Krg
mis
(2)

Sor ¼ Fk  Simm
or (3)

Sgi ¼ Fk  Simm
gi (4)
Mu et al. 5

Fk is the relative permeability interpolation parameter, given by the following formula

"
 #
r N
FK ¼ min 1; (5)
r0

where r is the IFT, and r0 is the “initial” tension corresponding to the read-in capillary
pressure curve. Kimm imm mis mis
ro and Krg are immiscible relative permeabilities. Kro and Krg are mis-
cible relative permeabilities generally taken to be a linear function of saturation.
The model further revised by many researchers and widely used in commercial simula-
tors, such as Eclipse and CMG (Al-Nuaimi et al., 2018; Coats, 1980; GeoQuest, 2014;
Hustad and Browning, 2010). This is a simple and practical approach to evaluate the
effect of miscibility on the relative permeability. Whitson et al., Pope et al. and Blom
et al. proposed mathematical models in which the relative permeability varied with capillary
number rather than IFT (Blom and Hagoort, 1998; Pope et al., 2000; Whitson and Fevang,
1997). Laroche developed a 1D, horizontal, immiscible two-phase flow model taking the
capillary end effect into consideration. Through the model, the exponent of the relative
permeability near its residual value was determined from a segment of the curve of the
outlet fraction flow (Laroche et al., 2001). Abbas (2016) improved JBN method for calcu-
lating relative permeability using the cubic spline numerical modeling technique. Compared
with the traditional way, the technique showed good results and the overall numerical error
was reduced. The interpolation parameter is the function of IFT in these models (Al-Nuaimi
et al., 2018; Alzayer et al., 2018; Hustad and Browning, 2010; Mott et al., 2000). Mott et al.
and Al-Nuaimi et al. established empirical formulas to determine the interpolation param-
eter by fitting the experimental data (Al-Nuaimi et al., 2018; Mott et al., 2000). The limi-
tation of the method is that it needs to perform experiments which are time-consuming and
costly. Alzayer et al. (2018) adopted the Gibbs free energy to determine the interpolation
parameter, which required a complex calculation process. Coats pointed out that the treat-
ment given here was not based on any theory or experimental evidence. In conclusion, on
one hand, it is necessary to prove the correctness of the interpolation method; on the other
hand, an effective and simple method to determine the interpolation parameter is needed.
Many previous studies have addressed issues of gas/oil relative permeability as a function
of IFT through laboratory experiments. Bardon and Longeron measured gas and oil curves
of methane/heptane system under different IFT using unsteady method (Longeron, 1980).
IFT was controlled by varying the equilibrium pressure of the mixture. The experimental
results showed that the shape of the curves varied considerably depending on the physical
properties of the phases and a linear relation between the relative permeability and IFT, seen
in Figure 1(a). Further analysis revealed that the major change in relative permeability
seemed to occur in the vicinity of r ¼ 0.04 mN/m and the relative permeability curves
tended towards straight lines as IFT approached 0.001 mN/m. Asar and Handy (1988)
did a similar study using a highly volatile methane/propane system to measure steady-
state relative permeability as the function of IFT. Similar effect was observed with a critical
IFT greater than 0.18 mN/m for a gas-condensate system. Munkerud and Torsaeter used a
six-component system and several reference systems to examine the effect of IFT on the
relative permeability. A typical figure of relative permeability for different IFT is shown in
Figure 1(b), which indicates that the relative permeabilities are almost straight lines when
r ¼ 0.03 and curve more with the increase of IFT. Residual oil saturation and relative
6 Energy Exploration & Exploitation 0(0)

Figure 1. (a) Relation between IFT and liquid relative permeability for different vapor saturation (Longeron,
1980); and (b) relative permeability for different IFT in a six-component gas condensate system, Berea core
(Munkerud and Torsaeter, 1995).

permeability determined from the displacement tests are affected strongly by IFT (Blom
et al., 2000; Cinar and Orr, 2005; Jahanbakhsh et al., 2016). These experimental studies
demonstrate that oil/gas relative permeabilities are affected significantly by IFT, and a linear
relationship between the relative permeability and IFT is observed. Especially, when IFT is
less than a threshold, the impact of IFT on the relative permeability is more pronounced.
Gas injection is a widely practiced mean for improving oil recovery because of its high
displacement efficiency and relatively low cost. More favorable miscibility can be developed
by higher pressure, lower temperature, lighter oil and richer gas. CO2 injection process is
generally operated at pressure above the MMP, which is the lowest pressure where the
injected gas becomes miscible with crude oil. There are two methods to determine MMP
from the viewpoint of miscibility mechanisms: based on the high oil recovery, more specif-
ically, small increment of oil recovery per pressure, such as slim tube test (SL) (Yellig and
Metcalfe, 1980), or based on the zeros IFT, such as vanishing-IFT technique (VIT) (Ayirala
and Rao, 2011; Rao, 1997) and rising bubble apparatus (Christiansen and Haines, 1987).
However, an inconsistency may exist between them. Figure 2(a) and (b) shows the MMP
from SL and VIT separately. It can be seen that the MMP from VIT is higher than that from
SL, and data from literatures also reveal similar results, as shown in Figure 3 (Al Riyami and
Rao, 2015; Jaubert et al., 2002; Rao and Lee, 2000; Tathed et al., 2010). The important thing
to conclude from this analysis is the miscibility criteria from VIT are more stringent. It is
generally believed that miscibility may repeatedly develop and break down in a reservoir due
to dispersion arising from viscous fingering and reservoir heterogeneity. Thus, many
“miscible” processes are in fact a mixture of miscible and low LFT, near-miscible processes
(Shyeh-Yung, 1991). The effluent from the SL test consisted of dark in-place oil followed by a
red fluid, then an orange fluid, then a yellow fluid, which also demonstrate that the displace-
ment process in the sand packed coil is dynamic. When the reservoir pressure is higher than
MMP from VIT test, by contrast, the IFT during miscible displacement process equals to
zeros. Consequently, MMP from SL and its corresponding IFT represent the turning point of
immiscible and miscible.
According to the above analyses, a methodology to determine the relative permeability
interpolation under different miscibility is proposed, considering the complicated interaction
between oil and gas. The IFT at the pressure of MMP is defined as critical IFT, r0, below
which relative permeability change dramatically. As a result, interpolation parameter, Fk, as
Mu et al. 7

Figure 2. (a) Comparison between MMP from SL and VIT for Rainbow stock-tank oil with propane (Rao,
1997); and (b) comparison between MMP from SL and VIT for Rainbow stock-tank oil with ethane (Rao, 1997).

Figure 3. MMP from VIT vs. MMP from SL.

a function of IFT, is determined to obtain the relative permeability. The Ramey correlation
is recommended in the absence of IFT data (Ramey, 1973), seen below. The parameters in
the correlation are shown in Appendix 1. The form of Ramey correlation is
"

# "

#
1 qo qg qo qg
rgo ¼ Po xo
4
 yo þ Pg xg  yg (6)
Mo Mg Mo Mg

The relative permeability of under immiscible condition where r > r0 can be obtained by
Corey-Brooks model (Brooks and Corey, 1964), shown as followed
no
ro ¼ KRO  ð1  Sgn Þ
Kimm (7a)

go ¼ KRG  Sgn
ng
Kimm (7b)
8 Energy Exploration & Exploitation 0(0)

S S
where Sgn ¼ 1Sg gi Sgi or . no and ng can be obtained by fitting the measured non-miscible relative
permeability curve.
Most of the previous studies have revealed that the relative permeability curves tended
towards straight lines when miscible condition is developed. That is to say

ro ¼ ð1  Sgn Þ
Kmis (8a)

go ¼ Sgn
Kmis (8b)

However, the derivative of relative permeability with respect to gas saturation under such
condition is not equal to zero. Without lack of generality, we can assume
nm
ro ¼ ð1  Sgn Þ
Kmis (9a)

go ¼ Sgn
nm
Kmis (9b)

Generally, it is recommended that nm ¼ 1.1.

Viscosity of oil and gas

CO2 solubility results in oil viscosity reduction due to gas injection. Zhou and Rui pointed
out that with the mix of the heavy oil and CO2, the viscosity of the heavy oil can be reduced
remarkably (up to 98%) (Zhou et al., 2019). Longeron concluded from the displacement
experiments that the ratio of the viscosities varied much less, though the capillary number
showed very large variation essentially due to the variation in IFT (Longeron, 1980). In this
paper, the effective oil and gas viscosities follow the Todd-Longstaff model (Todd and
Longstaff, 1972). They are given by

loeff ¼ lo1x  lx
m (10a)

lgeff ¼ lg1x  lx
m (10b)

where x is the mixing factor of viscosity. Todd believes that the appropriate value of x to be
used for miscible flood simulation is about 1/3 considering the reservoir condition.
The mixture viscosity is given by a 1/4-power fluid mixing rule, shown as follows

14 !14
1
1 S0g 1 S0o 1 4
¼ 0 þ 0 (11)
lm Sn l g Sn lo

where

S0o ¼ So  Sor
Mu et al. 9

S0g ¼ Sg  Sgi

S0n ¼ S0o þ S0g

Buckley-Leverett equation
The fundamental principle that underlies the description of flow in a porous medium is
conservation of mass. For one-dimensional seepage of two phase in homogeneous isotropic
horizontal porous medium, the following assumptions are made to obtain the analyti-
cal solution.

• The two-phase flow is linear and horizontal.

• The two fluids, crude oil and injected gas, are both incompressible.
• The porous media is incompressible.
• The effect of capillary and gravity is negligible.
• The gas is injected at the inlet, x ¼ 0.
• The injection pressure and production pressure are constant.

Subject to the assumptions stated, the conservations of mass for the oil (o) and gas (g)
phase become

@Sg @vg
/ þ ¼0 (12)
@t @x

@So @vo
/ þ ¼0 (13)
@t @x

Considering So þ Sg ¼1, the addition of equations (12) and (13) gives

@vt @ðvg þ vo Þ
¼ ¼0 (14)
@x @x

where vt  vg þ vo , which indicates that the total volumetric flux in one-dimensional perco-
lation keeps constant with spatial variation.
The classical fractional fractional-flow theory is based on the assumption of constant
volumetric flux, @v
@t ¼ 0. In this paper, it is assumed that the injection pressure and produc-
t

tion pressure are constant over time. Figure 4 is a schematic diagram of the seepage model.
The initial and boundary conditions of saturation and pressure are listed as follows.
Initial and boundary conditions of pressure

pð0; tÞ ¼ pin
pðL; tÞ ¼ pout (15)
pðx; 0Þ ¼ pout
10 Energy Exploration & Exploitation 0(0)

Figure 4. Linear displacement in a porous media.

Initial and boundary conditions of saturation

Sg ð0; tÞ ¼ 1  Sor ;
(16)
Sg ðx; 0Þ ¼ Sgi

When co-seepaging in the porous media, the two phases are subject to Darcy’s Law. For
the oil and gas phase, the volume fluxes are given separately as follows

KKro @p
vo ¼  (17)
loeff @x

KKrg @p
vg ¼  (18)
lgeff @x

Adding the two equations above, the total volumetric flux can be expressed as

@p @p
vt ¼ vg þ vo ¼ ðkg þ ko Þ ¼  kt (19)
@x @x

KK ðS ;DpÞ
where kt ðSg ; DpÞ¼ lro ðSg g Þ , representing the total mobility of the fluids at given saturation
oeff
and pressure.
The fractional-flow function for the gas phase is defined as follows

vg
fg ¼ (20)
vg þ vo

By substituting the Darcy equation into the definition formula, the fractional-flow func-
tion can be written as a function of gas saturation and pressure
1
fg ðSg ; pÞ ¼ Kro ðSg ;pÞ l ðS Þ
(21)
1þ Krg ðSg ;pÞ  lgeff ðSgg Þ
oeff

This equation can be used to determine the fractional-flow function of gas at any position
of the reservoir after the gas saturation and pressure are given. In order to obtain analytical
solution, the average pressure is used to determine the fractional-flow function. For the
Mu et al. 11

displacement process stated above where the pressure at both ends are given, the fractional-
flow function is a function of saturation, as follows

fg ðSg ; pÞ ¼ fg ðSg Þjp¼p (22)

where p¼ pin p

2 , the average pressure during the displacement.
out

By substituting the definition of fractional-flow function into equation (12), it can be

rewritten as follows

@Sg @fg
/ þ vt ¼0 (23)
@t @t

For the gas saturation is the function of time and distance, according to derivative
method for compound function, equation (23) can be written as

@Sg @fg @Sg

/ þ vt ¼0 (24)
@t @Sg @x

The equation is referred to as the Buckley-Leverett equation, which constitutes the math-
ematical model in this paper coupled with the initial and boundary conditions of pressure
and saturation.

Analytical solution

Frontal advance equation for gas flooding

The gas saturation on the section is constant, that is dSg ¼ 0. It is expressed as

@Sg @Sg
dSg ¼ dt þ dx ¼ 0 (25)
@t @x

Combining the above equation with equation (24), the front advance velocity of a certain
saturation is given as

dx vt
jSg ¼ f 0 g ðSg Þ (26)
dt /

Integrating equation (19) between inlet and outlet ends, the following relation can
be obtained
Z L
dx
Dp¼pin  pout ¼ vt (27)
0 kt
12 Energy Exploration & Exploitation 0(0)

The location of the front at a given time is xf corresponding the frontal saturation Sgf.
Dividing the integral into two parts, behind the gas front and ahead of the front, equation
(27) can be rewritten as
Z xf Z L ! Z xf !
dx dx dx L  xf
Dp ¼ vt þ ¼vt þ (28)
0 kt xf kt 0 kt kt ðSgi ; DpÞ

Applying integration by parts twice and rearranging it give

Z Z
xf
dx QðtÞ Sgf
f 00 ðSg Þ
¼ dSg (29)
0 kt / 1Sor kt
Z t
where QðtÞ¼ vt ðtÞdt.
0
The integral on the right side of the above equation is a constant. Let it be
Z Sgf
f00 ðSg Þ
f¼ dSg (30)
1Sor kt

Therefore, the total volumetric flux is shown as

Dp
vt ¼ QðtÞ Lx
(31)
/ f þ kt ðSgi ;DpÞ
f

Integrating the front advance velocity, equation (26), the location of a given gas satura-
tion at time t can be obtained
QðtÞ 0
xðSg ; tÞ ¼ f ðSg Þ (32)
/ g
For the saturation of the shock front, Sgf, determined by the Welege’s (1952) method seen
in Figure 5, the corresponding location of the shock front is

QðtÞ 0
xf ¼ f ðSgf Þ (33)
/ g

Thus, the total volumetric flux can be rewritten as

Dp
vt ¼ f
(34)
½f0  kt ðSgi1 ;DpÞxf þ kt ðSLgi ;DpÞ
g ðSgf Þ

Substituting the above equation into the front advance velocity, the following can
be obtained

dxf 1 Dpf0 g ðSgf Þ

¼ f
(35)
dt / ½f0  kt ðSgi1 ;DpÞxf þ kt ðSLgi ;DpÞ
g ðSgf Þ
Mu et al. 13

Figure 5. Graphical determination of front saturation with Welge’s method.

Let
f 1
2a ¼ 
f0 g ðSgf Þ kt ðSgi ; DpÞ
L
b¼ (36)
kt ðSgi ; DpÞ
Dpf0 g ðSgf Þ
c¼
/
Therefore, the front advance velocity can be rewritten as

dxf c
¼ (37)
dt axf þ b

Integrating the above equation from the inlet to the front, the location of the front is
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
b þ b2 þ 4ac  t
xf ¼ (38)
2a

Meanwhile, the total volumetric flux is determined as

Dp
vt ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi (39)
b2 þ 4ac  t
When the front breaks through at the outlet, xf in equation (38) equals the length of the
porous media, which means xf ¼ L. Thus, the breakthrough time can be obtained
aL2 þ bL
tBT ¼ (40)
c
14 Energy Exploration & Exploitation 0(0)

The profiles of saturation and pressure

By integrating the front advance velocity of the corresponding saturation, the location of a
certain saturation can be determined
Z
Dpf 0 ðSg Þ t
1
xðSg ; tÞ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi dt (41)
/ 0 b þ 4ac  t
2

The pressure profile can be determined by integrating equation (19). The front is the
dividing point of fluid distribution and the properties of fluid in the two parts are different
leading to different pressure profile behind and ahead of the front.
Z p Z x
dp ¼  kt dx (42)
pin 0

Behind the gas front, the gas has swept the zone where the oil and gas coexist. Therefore,
the pressure profile of this part can be determined by integrating from the inlet to the gas
front. We can get
Z
QðtÞ Sg f 00 ðSÞ
pðx; tÞ ¼ pin  vt dS (43)
/ 1Sor kt ðSÞ

Since the properties of the fluid vary along the path, the pressure profile is nonlinear
which can be observed from equation (43).
Ahead of the gas front, for the single phase of the oil phase flowing in the porous media,
the pressure profile which is linear, can be determined by integrating from the gas front to
the outlet.
vt
pðx; tÞ ¼ pout þ ðL  xÞ (44)
kt ðSgi Þ

Model verification
In this section, the verification is performed by comparing the analytical solution with the
numerical solution. First, based on the gas flood model, the relative permeabilities of gas
and oil under different condition are determined. Then, the saturation and pressure profiles
of gas flooding are calculated from the analytical model stated above and numerical solution
with finite difference method (FDM). In the numerical solution, the same models of viscos-
ity and relative permeability are adopted to determine the varying properties of the
two fluids.
The physical flow model is a one-dimensional linear porous medium, which is at first
saturated uniformly with oil (Soi ¼ 0.95) and gas (Sgi ¼ 0.05). A constant inlet and outlet
pressure is imposed, starting from t ¼ 0. The properties of porous media and fluids are
shown in Table 1. The immiscible relative permeability curve is measured experimentally
and the analytical expression is obtained by fitting the relative permeability index in the
Corey-Brook model, which is convenient for the determination of first and the second
derivative of fractional-flow fraction. The relative permeabilities under different miscible
condition are determined through the model in the first part of the mathematical model and
Mu et al. 15

Table 1. The parameters used in the calculation.

Properties of the reservoir Properties of the fluids

u 0.2 lo (mPas) 1.81

K (mD) 20 lg (mPas) 0.035
L (m) 200 qo (g/cm3) 0.7248
pi (MPa) 15.78 qg (g/cm3) 0.4333
T ( C) 84 pb (MPa) 10.48
pin (MPa) 22 KRG 0.6181
pout (MPa) 10 KRO 0.9
Sor 0.24
Sgi 0.05

the fractional-flow is obtained by equation (21). Thus, the saturation and pressure profiles
are calculated from equations (41), (43) and (44) separately.
Relative permeability is an exponential function of saturation in the Corey-Brooks
model. The relative permeability index can be obtained by fitting the double logarithmic
curve of the relative permeability experimental data, the result of which is ng ¼ 2.1079 and
no ¼ 2.9852, shown in Figure 6(a) and (b). The relative permeability calculated by the Corey-
Brooks model is in good agreement with the experimental data, as shown in Figure 7.
The oil recovery varying with pressure reaches its inflection at the pressure of 16.5 MPa,
corresponding to the IFT of 1.97 cP, as shown in Figure 8. Therefore, the critical IFT is 1.97
cP. Effective miscible displacement could not be formed between oil and gas where the IFT
is higher than critical IFT. The diffusivity of the gas was found to increase with temperature
and pressure (Jamialahmadi et al., 2006). Shu et al. (2017) concluded that the pressure is the
most important factor affecting the mass transfer during the gas injection. They pointed that
the interface concentration of CO2 in the oil phase increased with the pressure. The more
intense the mass transfer between the fluids, the lower the IFT. When the IFT is lowered
than 1.97 cP, the miscible condition of oil and gas will have a drastic change and the relative
permeability will vary with pressure. Based on the relative permeability model of gas flood-
ing established above, the relative permeability under different miscible condition is deter-
mined. Then, the fractional-flow curve is obtained from equation (21). Thus, the saturation
and pressure profiles are calculated from equations (41), (43) and (44) separately.
In order to verify the analytical solution, the numerical solution is obtained with FDM
using the same reservoir condition and physical properties. The geological model is turned
into a discrete system by subdividing the x-axis into N grid blocks, as illustrated in Figure 9.
The pressure is solved implicitly and the saturation is solved explicitly, and the calculated
results are shown in Figures 10 and 11. To avoid the physically unreal oscillation caused by
the central difference algorithm, the upwind style with first-order precision is used in the
numerical solution, which unfortunately results in significant numerical dispersion and a
smear front (Aziz, 1979; Wu, 2001), shown in Figure 12. It can be observed that the numer-
ical solution deviates only slightly at the shock front. This deviation can be improved by
refining the grid spacing. To reduce the effect of discretization on numerical simulation
results, very fine, uniform mesh spacing is chosen. As can be seen from the figure, the
impact of the discretization is very small when Dx ¼ 0.5 m.
16 Energy Exploration & Exploitation 0(0)

Figure 6. (a) and (b) Log-log plot of gas saturation and relative permeability for gas and oil separately.

Figure 7. The relative permeability in experiment and Corey model.

Figure 8. IFT between oil and gas and oil recovery in the experiment of slim tube versus different pressure.
Mu et al. 17

Figure 9. Schematic of numerical simulation with FDM.

Figure 10. Numerical simulation result for saturation profile.

Figure 11. Numerical simulation result for pressure profile.

The comparison between the analytical and numerical results is shown in Figures 13
and 14. The solid lines are the analytical results and the dashed lines are the numerical
results. The results show that the analytical solution is in reasonable agreement with numer-
ical solution. The shock front of saturation advances toward the outlet at a constant speed,
which is consistent with the case of constant volumetric flux (Arabzai and Honma, 2013).
The pressure profile is nonlinear behind the front and linear ahead of the front.

Results and discussion

For the gas flooding in porous media, the properties of porous media and fluids and the
injection and production parameters dramatically impact the flow of the fluids, which
determines the efficiency of gas displacement. Sensitivity analyses are conducted to investi-
gate the effect of these parameters, including the permeability of the porous media, the
viscosity and the injected pressure.
In the Buckley-Leverett equation, these parameters directly determine the fractional flow.
As shown in equation (21), the fractional flow is a function of saturation, pressure, and
viscosity. In order to study the effect on the fractional flow, the injection pressure is set to
14, 22 and 30 and the viscosity of the gas is set to 0.035, 0.105 and 0.175. Then, based on the
relative permeability model of gas flooding established above, the relative permeability curve
and fractional flow curve of different pressure and gas viscosity are determined, seen in
Figures 15 and 16. With the increase of pressure, remarkable reduction in residual oil sat-
uration and improvement of relative permeability are observed. Experimental data reveal
18 Energy Exploration & Exploitation 0(0)

Figure 12. Numerical solution of the Buckley-Leverett equation with different grid spacing.

Figure 13. Comparison between numerical and analytical results for saturation profile at different time.

the same variation rule, which is discussed thoroughly above. The essence of fractional-flow
function is the mobility ratio between the displacement fluid and the displaced fluid. The
results by Rui et al. indicated that the mobility ratio is a key element for determining the
displacement efficiency (Rui et al., 2017). The typical fractional flow curve has a character-
istic S-shape. With the increase of gas viscosity, the mobility of the displacing fluid increases
and the mobility ratio is improved. Thus, the increase of fractional flow varying with gas
saturation becomes slower and the front saturation decreases, similar to the result by Luo
et al. (2017). For less viscous gas, once the gas breaks through, the well will produce a large
amount of gas and the gas/oil ratio will rise sharply. The effect of pressure on fractional flow
is complicated. Under the condition of low gas saturation, the fraction flow increases with
the increase of pressure, contrary to the condition that the gas saturation is high.
The mobility ratio of oil and gas is not affected by permeability, but the mobility does.
Thus, the effect of viscosity, pressure, and permeability on the process of gas flooding from
Mu et al. 19

Figure 14. Comparison between numerical and analytical results for pressure profile at different time.

Figure 15. The relative permeability curve of oil and gas with different injection pressure.

the aspects of saturation and pressure profiles and the breakthrough time will be discussed
in detail.

Effect of permeability
Since the derivation of the classical Buckley-Leverett theory is based on the assumption of
constant volumetric flux, the permeability has no effect on the front advance velocity.
However, the situation is quite different in the case of constant pressure displacement at
both ends. To study the effect of the permeability, the permeability is set from 20 to 120,
while other parameters keep constant.
The total volume flux for different permeabilities is shown in Figure 17. With the increase
of the permeability, the total flux increases correspondingly and this increase is more obvi-
ous over time. The increase of the permeability results in the improvement of the mobility,
20 Energy Exploration & Exploitation 0(0)

Figure 16. The fractional flow curve with different injection pressure and oil viscosity.

Figure 17. Total volumetric flux varying with time for different permeability.

which makes the fluids flow more easily. Figure 18 is the saturation profile at 500 h for
different permeabilities. As shown in the figure, the advance distance of the displacement
front is longer as the permeability increases. The front advance velocity is proportional to
the total flux. Therefore, the front advance velocity increases and the advance distance of the
front becomes longer varying with permeability. In addition, it can be seen that the front
saturation and residual oil saturation are not affected by permeability. Because the average
pressure is constant, the miscible state does not change, neither does residual oil saturation.
Since the mobility ratio is independent of permeability, the front saturation dominated by
the mobility ratio is not affected by permeability. Consequently, the displacement efficiency
is same, but the oil production rate is larger for higher permeability. The breakthrough time
varying with permeability is shown in Figure 19. With the increase of permeability, the
breakthrough time is shortened and the decrease of the breakthrough time becomes
slower. Permeability has little effect on the breakthrough time when the permeability
Mu et al. 21

Figure 18. Saturation profile at 500 h for different permeability.

increases to a certain extent. In other words, the breakthrough time is more sensitive to the
permeability for low or ultra-low permeability reservoirs. From equation (40), it can be
observed that the breakthrough time is inversely proportional to permeability. The effect of
the permeability has its two sides: in a reservoir with higher permeability, the fluids are
easier to flow and the oil production is higher; the other side is that the breakthrough time
will be shortened. Once the gas channeling is formed, the oil production rate will decline
sharply and the gas–oil ratio will experience a rapid rise.

Effect of viscosity
The major challenges of the gas injection are the early breakthrough and the low sweep
efficiency. Unfavorable mobility ratio resulted from the low viscosity of the injected gas in
the reservoir condition is one of the core reasons. The gas viscosity is set from 0.035 to 0.21
to study its influence on the gas injection process.
The total volumetric flux varying with time for different viscosities is shown in Figure 20.
With the increase of the gas viscosity, the total flux decreases. The less viscous gas has a
greater mobility. At the early stage of gas injection, the flow of oil is dominated in the
porous media. As a result, the variation of gas viscosity has little impact on the total flux. As
the gas is continuously injected into the porous media, the gas begins to flow. With gas
viscosity increases, the total volumetric flux decreases gradually. The longer the time, the
more pronounced the effect. Figure 21 is the saturation profile at 3500 h for different gas
viscosities. The effect of the gas viscosity on the saturation profile is reflected in two aspects.
With the increase of the gas viscosity, on the one hand, the advance distance becomes
shorter; on the other hand, the front saturation increases. As mentioned above, the decrease
of mobility ratio leads to the change of the shape of fractional flow curve and the increase of
the front saturation. The increase of the front saturation and the decrease of the advance
distance lead to lower microscopic displacement efficiency of gas flooding. Nevertheless, the
effect on the breakthrough time is quite different. The breakthrough time is longer with the
increase of gas viscosity, as shown in Figure 22. The more viscous gas reduces the severity of
the viscous fingering, prolongs the breakthrough time and improves the macroscopic
22 Energy Exploration & Exploitation 0(0)

Figure 19. Breakthrough time for different permeability.

Figure 20. Total volumetric flux varying with time for different viscosity.

displacement efficiency. Compared with the effect on the microscopic displacement efficien-
cy, the improvement on the sweep efficiency is paid more attention. Hence, some researchers
are engaging in increasing the viscosity of the injected gas by chemical additives.

Effect of pressure
During gas injection, the injection pressure is a very important parameter affecting the
production performance. A higher pressure maintenance can change the miscibility of oil
and gas, and improve the oil displacement efficiency substantially. The injection pressure is
set from 14 to 30 to study its effect.
The total flux for different injection pressure is shown in Figure 23. With the increase of
the pressure, the flux increases correspondingly. Other conditions being equal, higher injec-
tion pressure means greater pressure difference and higher injection rate, which result in the
Mu et al. 23

Figure 21. Saturation profile at 3500 h for different viscosity.

Figure 22. Breakthrough time for different viscosity.

increase of the total flux. Figure 24 is the saturation profile at 2000 h for different pressure.
The effect of the pressure on the saturation profile is profound. On the one hand, the
residual oil saturation decreases with the increase of pressure, resulting in higher microscop-
ic displacement efficiency. On the other, the front saturation decreases varying with the
pressure. Moreover, the advance distance of the front is longer with higher injection pres-
sure. When the pressure is increased to or near the MMP, miscible or near-miscible status is
achieved, where the microscopic displacement efficiency is very high. The breakthrough time
varying with pressure is shown in Figure 25. With the increase of the injection pressure, the
breakthrough time is shortened and the decrease of the breakthrough time becomes slower.
Considering the remarkable oil recovery, a higher pressure is preferable. The upper limit of
the injection pressure is the maximum pressure that the equipment can provide or the
fractured pressure of the formation.
24 Energy Exploration & Exploitation 0(0)

Figure 23. Total volumetric flux varying with time for different pressure.

Figure 24. Saturation profile at 2000 h for different pressure.

Summary and conclusions

This paper presents an analytical solution for gas flooding with constant-pressure boundary
including the effect of miscibility by the relative permeability model and the viscosity model.
From the analytical solution, saturation and pressure profiles, the total volumetric flux and
the breakthrough time are determined. In order to verify the theory, the analytical solution
is compared with numerical solution. Through the analytical solution, the effect of the
properties of porous media and fluids on the performance of gas flooding is analyzed.
Some insights can be obtained:

1. It is revealed that the analytic solution is in reasonable agreement with numerical solu-
tion, apart from the slightly deviation of numerical result at the shock front, which can be
improved by refining the grid spacing. The analytical solution is used to obtain some
insight into the effect of the properties of porous media and fluids on the performance of
gas flooding.
Mu et al. 25

Figure 25. Breakthrough time for different pressure.

2. The main effect of permeability is the front advance velocity since the total flux is increas-
ing with the increase of permeability. In addition, the breakthrough time is shortened
with the increase of permeability.
3. Gas viscosity has an effect on the front saturation and front advance velocity because of
variations of gas mobility and mobility ratio with gas viscosity. Moreover, breakthrough
time is longer with the increase of gas viscosity.
4. The effect of pressure is complicated. Permeability and gas viscosity have no effect on
miscibility, but pressure does. With the pressure increase, there are remarkable reduction
in residual oil saturation and improvement of relative permeability, resulting in higher
gas saturation and oil displacement efficiency. Furthermore, higher injection pressure
accelerates breakthrough of the injected gas.

Through the analyses of the results, the influence of these factors on gas flooding is
clarified. This paper introduces the varying properties into the Buckley-Leverett equation
and considers the constant-pressure boundaries, which expand the applied scope of the
Buckley-Leverett theory. The analytical solution presented in this paper provides guidance
on analyzing the distribution of saturation and pressure profiles and predicting the gas
production and oil recovery efficiency of oil well. The model is based on the assumption
that the fluids is incompressible However, this is not the case in the condition that the
average pressure of the reservoir is low. Therefore, the model is suitable for the high pressure
condition. Furthermore, it is assumed that the flow is one-dimensional and the vertical flow
is neglected. Thus, the effect of gravity override on the breakthrough time is not taken into
consideration. Future work will focus on (1) case study to predict the production perfor-
mance of a real oil reservoir and (2) extension of the work to complex situations like cap-
illary force, gravity, two-dimensional flow, etc.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the Science Foundation of China University of Petroleum Beijing for the help.
We are grateful to the editor and anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments
for improving the article.
26 Energy Exploration & Exploitation 0(0)

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article: This work is supported by National Science and Technology Major Projects
(2017ZX05009004-005), and National Natural Science Foundation (U1762210).

ORCID iD
Lingyu Mu http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0987-2772

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Appendix 1
IFT is necessary in many reservoir engineering studies. MacLeod first proposed an empirical
equation to estimate the effect of temperature on surface tension. Later studies revealed
that the IFT depends on pressure, temperature and density difference and the correlation is
based theoretically on that the IFT is dominated by the density difference (Katz et al.,
1943; Ramey, 1973). Ramey gave a method for estimating gas/oil IFT. The Ramey correla-
tion, based on the Macleod equation, is used to determine the IFT between oil and gas over a
wide range in temperature and pressure (Ramey, 1973). Whitson and Brulé (2000) extended
the Ramey method to include the impact of solution gas ratio. The specific calculation for-
mulas are as follows. The Ramey correlation can be written as
"

# "

#
1 qo qg qo qg
rgo ¼ Po xo
4
 yo þ Pg xg  yg
Mo Mg Mo Mg

where

1
xo ¼
1 þ ð7:52  106 ÞRs ðMo =co Þ

xg ¼ 1  xo

1
yo ¼
1 þ ð7:52  106 Þrs ðMo =co Þ

yg ¼ 1  yo

62:4co þ 0:0136cg Rs
qo ¼
62:4Bo

qg ¼ 0:0932ðpMg =ZTÞ
30 Energy Exploration & Exploitation 0(0)

Mo ¼ xo Mo Po þ xg Mg

Mg ¼ yo Mo Po þ yg Mg

Mo ¼ 6084=cAPI  5:9

Mg ¼ 28:97=cg

Po ¼ ð2:376 þ 0:0102cAPI Þ=Mo

Pg ¼ 25:2 þ 2:86Mg

where xo and xg are mole fractions of components respectively in the oil phase, as well as yo
and yg are mole fractions of components respectively in the gas phase.
To obtain Z factor, the Hall-Yarborough empirical equation is used.

Z ¼ appr =y

2
where a ¼ 0:06125t  e1:2ð1tÞ and t ¼ 1=Tpr . The parameter y is given by the following
relationship

y þ y2 þ y3 þ y4
fðyÞ ¼ 0 ¼ appr þ  ð14:76t  9:76t2 þ 4:58t3 Þy2
ð1  yÞ4
þ ð90:7t  242:2t2 þ 42:4t3 Þy2:18þ2:82t

Solution gas/oil ratio, Rs, is the volume of gas (at the standard condition) liberated from a
single-phase oil at elevated pressure and temperature divided by the resulting stock-tank-oil
volume. The solution gas/oil ratio can be obtained with
(
cg ½ð0:055pþ1:4Þ10
0:0125cAPI
1:205 ; p < pb
Rs ¼ 100:00091T
Rsi ; p  pb

where pb is the bubble point.

Formation volume factor, FVF, is defined as the volume of a mixture at specified pressure
and temperature divided by the volume of a product phase measured at the standard con-
dition. It can be calculated by the following correlation
8

> cAPI
>
> 1 þ A 1 R s þ A 2 ðT  60Þ
>
> cg
<

Bo ¼ c
> þA3 Rs ðT  60Þ c ; p < pb ;
API
>
>
>
> g
:
Bob eco ðpb pÞ ; p > pb
Mu et al. 31

1433þ5Rsb þ17:2T1180cg þ12:61cAPI

where co ¼ 105 p
; for pressure over bubble point
and Bob ¼ 0:9759 þ 12  105 ½Rsb ðcg =co Þ0:5 þ 1:25T1:2 .

Appendix
Notation
Bob oil FVF at bubble point (saturated) condition, m3/m3
c oil compressibility, Pa1
f fractional flow
Fk relative permeability interpolation parameter
K permeability, m2
Kr relative permeability
KRG gas relative permeability at residual oil saturation
KRO oil relative permeability at irreducible gas saturation
M molecular weight
n relative permeability index
L medium length, m
P parachor, (mN/m)(1/4)cm3/mol
p pressure, Pa
pb bubble point, Pa
Rs solution gas/oil ratio, m3/m3
S phase saturation
t time, s
v volumetric flux, m/s
x distance, m
c specific gravity, air ¼1 or water ¼1
cAPI (141.5/co)-131.5, oil gravity,  API
k mobility, m2/Pas
l viscosity, Pas
q density, kg/m3
r interfacial tension, mN/m
u porosity

Superscript or subscript
‘ derivative of variable
g displacing gas phase
gi irreducible gas phase
imm superscript of parameter at the immiscible state
in inlet
mis superscript of parameter at the miscible state
o displaced oil phase
or residual oil phase
out outlet
T total
32 Energy Exploration & Exploitation 0(0)

Unit conversion
1 mD 1015 m2
1 mPas 103 Pas
1 MPa 106 Pa
1 m/h 3600 m/s
1 g/cm3 103 kg/m