فهرست نشریات علمی دسترسی آزاد ایران

The spontaneous imbibition of aquifer/injected brine is one of the main mechanisms of hydrocarbon recovery in the water-invaded zone of fractured reservoirs. Most rock types of fractured reservoirs are oil-wet carbonate. Thus, the simulation of spontaneous imbibition becomes more important when an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method such as modified salinity injection is applied for wettability alteration toward a more water-wet state. Since 1962, many scaling equations have been proposed to develop transfer functions and improve the simulation of spontaneous imbibition. Unfortunately, the majority of those proposed scaling equations are developed based on ideal conditions in the laboratory and, hence, have not considered the real conditions of a fractured reservoir. High temperature, rock oil-wettability, live oil properties, wettability alteration, lithology specification, and gravity force are among the important factors ignored in most of the developed scaling equations in the literature. The neglection of these effective elements can cause over- or under-estimation of hydrocarbon recovery by spontaneous imbibition. Therefore, this review discusses the advantages and limitations of scaling equations in the literature with a critical point of view and recommends many research topics for researchers interested in experimental works or data analysis in the  area of spontaneous imbibition. The ideal goal of decades of research in this area is to reach a general scaling equation with a special term for each specific lithology and EOR strategy.