Experimental Study on Gas–Water Relative Permeability Behavior during Multi-Cycle Injection–Production in Gas Reservoir Storage
Abstract
Converting depleted gas reservoirs into underground gas storage (UGS) is a critical strategic measure for ensuring national energy security and meeting peak-shaving and supply demands. During long-term multi-cycle injection–production operations, the rock pore structure and fluid distribution within the reservoir undergo dynamic evolution, leading to marked changes in gas–water relative permeability characteristics, which in turn directly affect the evaluation of effective working gas capacity and the design of pressure-boosting and capacity-expansion schemes. In this study, typical core samples were collected from a depleted-gas-reservoir UGS facility in Xinjiang. Multi-cycle gas–water alternating displacement experiments were performed using the unsteady-state method under high-temperature and high-pressure conditions (95 °C, 40–45 MPa), while triaxial cyclic loading–unloading was applied to simulate in-situ stress perturbations. The results reveal that with increasing injection–production cycles, the gas phase becomes trapped as isolated bubbles under the influence of the strong water-wettability of the rock and interfacial tension, causing the residual gas saturation to rise significantly (average increase of approximately 12%–15%). The gas-phase relative permeability curve shifts downward as a whole, exhibiting a pronounced cyclic hysteresis phenomenon. Concurrently, the irreducible water saturation gradually decreases, and the isotonic point of the two phases moves toward the lower left. A comparison of different operating pressure conditions shows that after boosting the pressure to 45 MPa, although the total gas-filled pore volume increases slightly owing to the reduction of irreducible water, the residual gas trapping effect intensifies, and the effective working gas capacity faces a risk of decline. This study elucidates the evolution mechanisms of gas–water flow capacity under multi-cycle injection–production and provides a crucial theoretical foundation and data support for the dynamic evaluation of storage capacity and the engineering practice of pressure boosting and capacity expansion.
Article Type: Research Article
Cited as:
Wang KJ, Mao HJ, Dai XJ. 2026. Experimental Study on Gas–Water Relative Permeability Behavior during Multi-Cycle Injection–Production in Gas Reservoir Storage. GeoStorage, 2(2), 172-179.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46690/gs.2026.02.05Keywords:
Depleted gas reservoir, underground gas storage, multi-cycle injection–production, relative permeability, hysteresis effectReferences
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