Predicting dead-end pore-volume in a reservoir from single tracer experiment

Tracer studies are used to characterize the porous media for pore volume occupied by different phases and flow trajectories and velocity of the phases. When a tracer is injected as a pulse into a liquid stream flowing in a porous media, the stagnant or the dead-end pore volume in the porous media interacts with the tracer leading to a tailing effect in the outlet tracer curve. The tailing-effect impacts the determination of the flow path or the phase saturations in the porous media using the outlet tracer concentration. Generally, history matching of the effluent concentration profile is used to determine and separate the effect of dead-end pore volume from other tracer behavior in the reservoir such as dispersion or convection. History matching is computationally expensive and many simulation runs are required to match the exit concenetration profile. In the present work we have used the method of moments of the Residence Time Distribution (RTD) of the tracer to determine dead-end pore volume and parameters associated with it. We are able to describe from the method deviced, which parameters can be determined and which cannot be determined in different flow scenarios in the porous media. We also use numerical experiments of the tracer transport in porous media and compare the results with the method of moments. In the end, we delineate general guidelines for estimation of the parameters, especially the dead-end pore volume.