Abstract:

Light Transmission Method has been extensively used in phase saturation measurements in porous media due to its
non-destructive and non-invasive feature. However doubt about its effectiveness still exists due to the lack of local data validation.
Given the fact that it is impossible to obtain local data experimentally, numerical simulation was then developed to verify its
effectiveness, in the cases of water-gas flow in heterogeneous porous media. The results show that (1) simulation results agree with the
light transmission results in terms of the gas distribution pattern and gas saturation range in the heterogeneous porous media; (2) six
local saturation values of light transmission results in time-series graph show good consistency with the simulation results at each
moments, meanwhile the analysis of 5316 local saturation data within 12 minutes shows the determination coefficient reaches 0.94
between the simulation results and the light transmission results. The results validate the effectiveness of light transmission method at
local points, with the difference being caused by the sandbox packing; (3) the total gas volume calculated by both simulation and the
water displacement volume agree with the data by light transmission results. Through these three qualitative and quantitative analyses,this paper verifies the effectiveness of light transmission method in measuring liquid saturation.

Key words: light transmission method, Numerical Modeling, verification of effectiveness, saturation, Water-Gas Flow, heterogeneous porous media