For many years many efforts have been performed in the laboratory experiments to duplicate the reservoir conditions. In this study, we will investigate the permeability change at different overburden conditions. The reduction in permeability with overburden pressure has been well known. Fatt and Davis (1952) presented the changes in permeability with pressure at range 0 to 15,000 psig and found that overburden pressure caused a reduction in permeability of the consolidated oil-bearing sandstone samples by as much as 50% at 10,000 psig. Wyble (1958) performed similar experiments on three different sandstone samples to determine the changes in conductivity, porosity and permeability at pressure range 0 to 5,000 psig. His results were consistent with the observation by Fatt and Davis (1952). During the experiments, different overburden pressures (radial force) were applied only to the cylinder core while the axial direction was kept at constant atmospheric pressure. Gray et al. (1963) enhanced the previous experiments by applying axial force and combining with overburden pressure (radial force) to measure the anisotropy permeability changes at more representative reservoir stress-state condition. They showed that permeability reduction subjected to overburden pressure as a function of the ratio of radial to axial stress and the permeability reduction …

The objective of this project is to perform unique laboratory experiments with artificial fractured cores (AFCs) and X-ray CT to examine the physical mechanisms of bypassing in HFR and NFR that eventually result in less efficient CO{sub 2} flooding in heterogeneous or fracture-dominated reservoirs. This report provides results of the second semi-annual technical progress report that consists of three different topics. In the first topic, laboratory experiments were performed on a Berea core to investigate the changes in rock properties and fluid flow under different stress-state conditions. A comparative study of different stress conditions was also conducted to analyze the effect of the various loading systems. The experimental results show that fracture permeability reduces significantly as the stress increases compared to matrix permeability. The hydrostatic and triaxial stresses have greater impacts on permeability reduction compared to applying stress in the uniaxial stress condition. Fracture flow dominates when the applied stress is less, however, the matrix flow rate increases as applied stress increases and dominates at high stress even if the fracture does not heal completely. In the second topic, the preliminary results of static imbibition experiments are presented as a precursor to image the saturation profiles using X-Ray CT scanner. …