Ultrasonic monitoring of spontaneous imbibition experiments: Precursory moisture diffusion effects ahead of water front

Fluid substitution processes have been investigated in the laboratory on 14 carbonate and siliciclastic reservoir rock analogues through spontaneous imbibition experiments on vertical cylindrical specimens with simultaneous ultrasonic monitoring and imaging. The motivation of our study was to identify the seismic attributes of fluid substitution in reservoir rocks and to link them to physical processes. It is shown that (i) the P wave velocity either decreases or increases when the capillary front reaches the Fresnel clearance zone, (ii) the P wave amplitude is systematically impacted earlier than the velocity is, (iii) this precursory amplitude decrease occurs when the imbibition front is located outside of the Fresnel zone, and (iv) the relative variation of the P wave amplitude is always much larger than that of the P wave velocity. These results suggest that moisture diffuses into the pore space ahead of the water front. This postulate is further supported by a quantitative analysis of the time evolution of the observed P wave amplitudes. In a sense, P wave amplitude acts as a precursor of the arrival of the capillary front. This phenomenon is used to estimate the effective diffusivity of moisture in the tested rocks. The effective moisture diffusivity estimated from the ultrasonic data is strongly correlated with permeability: a power law with exponent 0.96 predicts permeability from ultrasonic monitoring within a factor 3 without noticeable bias. When the effective diffusivity is high, moisture diffusion affects ultrasonic P wave attributes even before the imbibition starts and impacts the P wave reflectivity as evidenced by the variations recorded in the waveform coda.