The influence of gas injection and production rates on pore-scale gas-water movement in low-permeability heterogeneous gas storage based on microfluidic technique

Abstract

Low permeability heterogeneous gas storage is one of the important types of gas storage currently, and clarifying its microscopic gas water movement laws is crucial for improving the operational efficiency of gas storage. This study investigated the impact mechanism of gas injection and production rates on the gas-water movement behaviors at the pore-scale in low-permeability heterogeneous gas storages. To achieve this, a series of microfluidics experiments was conducted using large-scale chips under different injection and production rate conditions. The dynamic evolution of gas-water distributions, migration pathways, and gas-bearing pore spaces was recorded and quantitatively analyzed. The results indicate that slow injection combined with fast production significantly improved the utilization efficiency of gas-bearing pore spaces. Slow injection promoted more uniform gas displacement and reduced fingering, while the fast production suppressed water occupation in pore throats and mitigated water-locking effects. Conversely, fast injection and slow production led to rapid early gas invasion but increased the formation of water-locked capillary valves, resulted in a higher proportion of bound pore-throats and reduced effective gas storage spaces during subsequent rounds. Microscopic observations showed that repeated injection–production processes progressively increase water-locked throats, limiting further gas migration. Parameter analysis based on capillary number demonstrated that the slow injection/fast production strategies favored the expansion of dynamic gas-bearing boundaries and lowered bound-throat ratios. Furthermore, pore-scale transport mechanisms are discussed using single pore-throat models, highlighted the roles of wettability, corner flow, and capillary resistance in controlling gas advance and retreat behaviors. The findings providing valuable insights into optimizing injection-production strategies for low-permeability heterogeneous gas storages, and offering theoretical support for improving gas storage efficiency and reducing water-locking effects.

1 Introduction

With the continuous growth of global energy demands and the requirements for clean energy transformation, natural gas as a relatively clean transitional energy source, has been increasingly valued for its development and utilization (Bazmi and Zahedi, 2011; Safari et al., 2019; Bugaje et al., 2022). However, the relationship between supply and demand of natural gas is easily affected by seasons, that is, supply exceeds demand in summer, while opposite in winter (Akpinar and Yumusak, 2016). Gas storage is an important way to regulate this relationship (Tarkowski et al., 2021). As a typical gas storage, low-permeability heterogeneous gas storages have complex pore structures, and the gas-water migration characteristics are affected by many factors (Tooseh et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2022a). Therefore, their gas-water movement laws at the pore-scale are complex. Although there are many factors that can affect the injection and production efficiency of gas storage, for the gas storage site, the parameter that can be directly and easily changed is the injection and production speed, which can be achieved by controlling the pipeline pressure of the injection station. Hence, study the impact of gas injection and production rates on the gas-water movement laws at the pore-scale in low-permeability heterogeneous gas storage reservoirs is of great significance for optimizing the operating parameters and improving the efficiency (Purswani et al., 2024; Lysyy et al., 2022). Due to the low physical properties and strong heterogeneity of the gas storages, the migration law of gas is complex (Feldmann et al., 2016; Xu et al., 2025; Qiao et al., 2019). During the gas injection processes, as the pressure increased, the porosity increased due to pressure sensitivity effects, and the gas migration mode gradually shift from Knudsen diffusion to viscous flow (Enab and Emami-Meybodi, 2021; Zhao et al., 2024; Emami-Meybodi et al., 2024). During the gas production processes, the decrease in gas pressure will cause the diffusion and release of dissolved gas in the pores, further affected the gas-water movement law (Amann-Hildenbrand et al., 2012; Zhao et al., 2021; Cadalen and Lance, 2011). To sum up, it is urgent to carry out the impact of injection and production rates on efficiency and gas-bearing spaces, in order to provide a theoretical basis for the efficient development of gas storage.

Low permeability heterogeneous gas storage is transformed from low permeability reservoir, so the research results of low permeability reservoir are also applicable to this type of gas storage, which also opens a new idea for literature research (Zhang et al., 2025; Wang et al., 2022b). Currently, scholars have conducted extensive research on the gas-water movement law in low-permeability heterogeneous reservoirs and have made significant progress (Shi et al., 2023; Blas and ingame, 2008; Blunt, 1997; AlAbdullah et al., 2025). For example, in terms of revealing fluid distributions at the pore-scale, previous studies have used microscopic testing techniques, such as scanning electron microscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance, to analyze the microscopic pore structures and clarified the initial distribution states of fluid (Razavifar et al., 2021; Wang and Cheng, 2023; Koptyug et al., 2002). In order to explore the impact of gas injection and production rates on the fluid movement behaviors, scholars have designed experiments under different gas injection and production rate conditions to monitor the dynamic flow processes of fluid in the pores, and analyzed the impact of rate changes on fluid distribution, migration path, and spatial distributions (Zhang et al., 2022; Gao et al., 2024; Chang et al., 2025). Regarding the fluid-solid interactions in the process of gas-water flow, some scholars have also utilized comprehensive experimental and numerical simulation methods to clarify the dynamic issues involved (Chang et al., 2025; Rebouillat and Liksonov, 2010; Li et al., 2024). In terms of establishing in-situ models to study fluid movement laws, previous studies have constructed models represented the low-permeability heterogeneous gas storages based on the experimental data and theoretical analysis, providing theoretical support for optimizing the operation of the reservoir (Boisson et al., 2001; Kuchuk et al., 2010; He et al., 2025). Some scholars have also paid attention to the fracture propagation prediction under strong injection and production conditions (Wang L. et al., 2025; Xia et al., 2024; Kamali and Ghassemi, 2018; Kang et al., 2024). These studies provide references for the mechanism of gas-water flow in low permeability heterogeneous gas storages.

In recent years, with the continuous popularization of new energy business, researchers have paid attention to the research of gas storage for other gases, especially hydrogen (Usman, 2022; Niaz et al., 2015; Ali et al., 2025; Wang H. et al., 2025). At the same time, in order to cope with global climate change, the research on carbon dioxide storage has also attracted much attention (Ringrose et al., 2021; Juanes et al., 2010; Zhou et al., 2017; Sun et al., 2018). These microscopic results can also provide a basis for the study of gas water relationship in gas storage. For example, some researchers used microfluidic methods to study the gas-water distribution mechanisms of hydrogen in the process of repeated injection production cycles from both qualitative and quantitative aspects, and analyzed the influence of pore-scale hydrogen storage capacity, gas water distribution and velocity on the utilization rate of gas-bearing spaces (Lysyy et al., 2023; Bahrami et al., 2024; Gao et al., 2023; Betancur et al., 2024). Other researchers have studied pore-scale flow behavior and hysteresis in underground hydrogen storage in sandstones, and studied the impact of both injection and production processes on the gas-water relationship, especially the gas storage capacity under a variety of gas water conditions, such as hydrogen/brine system and carbon dioxide/brine system (Bahrami et al., 2024; Song et al., 2024; Wang S. et al., 2025). Other researches explained the microscopic mechanism of fluid migration by studied the dynamic changes of contact angle at different time points during injection and production (van Rooijen et al., 2022; Nowrouzi et al., 2019; Tangirala and Sheng, 2019). The research on the microscopic flow of these other gases provided methods and theoretical references for the fluid flow mechanism of low-permeability heterogeneous gas storages.

However, although there are many researches on the microscopic movement of gas and water at present, most studies focused on the impact of permeability changes, gas migration pathways, and reservoir heterogeneity on production performance characteristics at the macroscale (Moridis et al., 2011). The studies of the fluid distributions at the pore-scale, and the impact of gas injection and production rates are not enough yet. In addition, existing gas injection and production experiments of gas storages were mostly focused on salt cavern gas storage facilities, with relatively less researches on low-permeability heterogeneous gas storages. By the way, most existing experiments are conducted at low pressures, which greatly differ from real formation pressure conditions, making it difficult to reflect the characteristics of gas storages under real conditions (Zhang et al., 2016). Moreover, most of the microfluidic chips’ researches on the laws of gas and water movement is realized by using small chips at present, and there are relatively few large chips with more than 10 cm in size (van Rooijen et al., 2022). Based on this, this study used 20 cm × 20 cm large-scale chips to study the gas and water movement laws of gas storage. Firstly, experimental schemes under different gas injection and production rates are designed, and microfluidic gas reservoir chip-related devices are used to simulate the gas injection and production process under real conditions. Then, the dynamic flow process of gas and water in the pores were recorded, and the distribution, migration path, and migration rates of fluid were analyzed. Finally, combined with experimental data, using fluid mechanics, percolation mechanics and other theories, the impact mechanism of gas injection and production rates on the fluid movement laws were analyzed, and the pore-scale gas-water movement law models were constructed. This research hopes to provide new theoretical insights and technical support for the efficient and stable operation of low-permeability heterogeneous gas storages.

2 Methodology

This experiment used the microfluidic chip made of glass material. Compared with rock chips, microfluidic chip manufacturing processes have stronger controllability, better sealing, and relatively simpler processes. More importantly, the use of microfluidic chips enables repetitive experiments, providing a fundamental guarantee for injection and production experiments under different conditions. At the same time, the main mineral of sandstone in gas reservoirs is quartz, which has the same composition as glass, making microfluidic chips more representative for conducting experiments. In summary, this experiment conducted research using microfluidic chip, and the results obtained have representativeness.

2.1 Chip manufacturing processes

2.2 Experimental process of microfluidic chip

3 Results and discussion

3.1 Determination of injection and production rounds

Clarifying the impact of injection and production rounds on the gas-containing spaces of gas storage can improve the experimental testing efficiency of this study, that is, to determine the stable operation of the gas storage after several rounds of injection and production, in order to achieve the best experimental results with the least number of experiments. Therefore, priority tests were given with lower injection and production volumes (100 μL). The results of the gas reservoir chip experiment indicate that with the gradual increase of injection and production rounds, the gas storage gas-containing spaces showed gradually expanding trends (Figure 1). This phenomenon indicated that during continuous gas injection and production processes, the permeation and diffusion range of gas in the gas reservoir chip expanded, gradually occupied more pore space. After four production rounds, the gas-containing pore space reached stable state, which means that in the subsequent injection production processes, the changes in the gas-containing pore spaces remained nearly the same, indicated that after a certain number of operations, the spatial distribution of the gas storage gradually reached dynamic equilibrium.

FIGURE 1

In addition to qualitatively identified changes in gas-bearing spaces, we also quantitatively calculated the gas bearing space change rate under different injection production rounds (Figure 2). The statistical data showed that after four rounds of injection and production, the increase in gas-containing pore spaces were less than 2%, and the subsequent rounds below to 1.1%, which met the principle of stable operation of the gas storage if it is below 3% on site. Therefore, in the subsequent experiments, we conducted four rounds of injection and production.

FIGURE 2

3.2 Chip characteristics at different injection and production rates

The gas reservoir chip images showed the brine-gas distributions under the conditions of slow injection and fast production from the injection beginning and production in the end at different rounds (Figure 3). The images illustrated that with the increased of injection and production rounds, the gas-containing space was gradually expanded. The expansion of the brine-gas boundary was obvious in the first two rounds, and then the expansion rate decreased. The gas-containing space is basically fixed, which is consistent with the experimental results that Section 3.1 have mentioned. This phenomenon clearly indicated that during the injection production processes, the gas-containing spaces were constantly increased, and the gas can effectively penetrated and occupied wider areas, demonstrated good fluidity and diffusion of the fluids. These operations are conducive to the uniform distribution and effective displacement of gas in the pores, thus improved the utilization efficiency of the pore spaces.

FIGURE 3

The fast injection and slow production experiments exhibited different characteristics. The experimental results showed that under the condition of fast injection and slow production, with the increase of injection and production rounds, the gas-containing spaces were relatively high at the beginning, but the growth rates were low (Figure 4). It was illustrated from the microscopic images that under the condition of fast injection, the gas moved rapidly, resulted in the rapid expansion of gas bearing spaces. However, under the condition of slow recovery, the wetting phase quickly occupied the tiny throats, resulted in the increase of capillary valves and serious water-lock, led to the limited gas injection efficiency subsequently. Therefore, fast injection and slow production are not conducive to the expansion of gas bearing space qualitatively, although gas could occupy the more pore spaces initially, the pore spaces could not be utilized efficiently during slow production.

FIGURE 4

Comparing the gas storage boundaries can clarify the qualitative change of the gas storage gas-containing spaces under different injection and production conditions. The figures revealed that the expansion of the boundaries is faster in the early stage of injection and production (Figure 5A). These phenomena resulted from the gas-water boundaries rapid expansions due to fast gas injection. At the second to fourth rounds of injection and production, the expansion rate of the gas-containing spaces of slow injection and fast production was significantly higher (Figure 5B). These phenomena indicated that during the rapid injection of gas, although the storage space increased, the diffusion and permeation rate of gas relatively slow, resulted in limited expansion of the storage gas-containing spaces. In contrast, the slow injection and fast production strategy were more conducive to the widespread distribution of gas and the effective expansion of gas storage dynamic boundaries.

FIGURE 5

3.3 Analysis of microscopic images and flow parameters

Microscopic images indicate that as the round of injection and production increased, the capillary valve caused by water-lock became more difficult to broken through. The gas storage space after the second round of injection and production became bound pore after the third round of injection and production (Figures 6A,B). This is because the water in the throat formed capillary valve, based on the capillary pressure formula, the breakthrough pressure required for the capillary valve is relatively high, resulted to the difficult for gas to enter the pore through the throat. Due to the existence of water-locked capillary valve, the proportion of invalid pores gradually increased. These invalid pores are pores that are occupied by water, making it difficult for gas to enter. After continuous gas injection, the actual effective gas-bearing space is not fully utilized due to the increasing proportion of invalid pores. With the increased of injection production rounds, the reason for the increase of invalid pores is that within the scope of effective gas storage space, more and more throats were filled with water, resulted in the increase of capillary valves (Figures 6C,D). Therefore, the increase in gas-bearing space after gas injection mainly occurs in areas that have not yet been affected by water-locking effects.

FIGURE 6

Capillary number (N_Ca) is an important parameter to characterize two-phase flow, which is the ratio of viscous force to capillary force. N_Ca is usually defined as N_Ca = Uμ/σ = Qμ/σLdφ, where U is the velocity, Q is the injection/production rate, μ is the injected fluid viscosity, μ_N2 = 3.3 × 10⁻⁵ Pa·s, μ_H2O = 1.0 × 10⁻³ Pa·s (Seibt et al., 2006; Korson et al., 1969). σ is the interfacial tension, and the value is 0.022 N/m in this research, because we define the system as nitrogen-water system here (Grenob et al., 2021). L, d, and φ are microchips’ length, depth, and porosity, respectively. Table 1 showed the relevant parameters and the calculation results. In the process of gas injection, the lower capillary number led to uniform displacement, uniform expansion of gas-bearing area and less fingering of gas. In the process of gas production, the higher capillary number resulted to the rapid recovery of non-wetting phase, which made a higher final recovery under the condition of slow injection and rapid production.

3.4 Parameter characteristics at different injection and production rates

The comparison of data from gas-containing spaces experiments under different injection and production rates showed that the expansion of gas storage dynamic boundaries was pronounced under slow injection and fast production conditions (Figure 7). Specifically, compared with fast injection and slow production, the increase in gas-bearing spaces under the slow injection and fast production strategy is larger, indicated that gas could penetrate and occupied the reservoir effectively and then formed wider gas-bearing areas. Meanwhile, in terms of total volume, the gas content under slow injection and fast production conditions was relatively high, which further confirmed the advantages of this strategy in expanding the gas-containing spaces of gas storage and improving gas storages efficiency. This discovery is of great significance for guiding the selection of injection and production strategies in the operation of actual gas storages. It suggested that while pursuing injection and production efficiency, we should consider the influence of injection and production rates on the gas-containing spaces and the gas storages. At the same time, it is worth noting that as the gas-containing spaces expanded, the proportion of confined water pores-throats in the gas storage area (i.e., the coordination pores and throats of single or continuous water-containing pores and throats are all gas) gradually increased (Figure 8).

FIGURE 7

FIGURE 8

Statistical data also showed that as the number of injection and production rounds increased, the proportion of bound water pores and throats growth, but the proportion of bound water pores and throats formed under slow injection and fast production conditions was relatively low (Figure 9). This difference was caused by capillary action, according to a variant of the capillary force formula:where r is radius, σ is the interfacial tension, θ is the contact angle, and P_c is the capillary pressure. During the gas injection processes, the water phase acted as a capillary resistance, while played a capillary dynamic role at the production rounds. Therefore, under slow injection conditions, the non-wetting phase of the gas was subjected to greater capillary resistance, resulted in uniform propulsion and less water-lock sites. Under fast injection conditions, non-wetting gas can easily break through the capillary blockage, formed discontinuous bubbles, and led to water-lock. According to the conversion of injection and production rates in this experiment, the continuous flow aperture ratio under slow and fast injection conditions was:where R_si is the critical pore radius under slow injection conditions, R_fi is the critical pore radius under fast injection conditions, v_si and v_fi are the injection speed under slow injection and fast injection conditions, respectively. Therefore, the probability of forming a water lock under fast injection conditions was approximately twice that under slow injection conditions. At the same time, rapid production resulted in a higher gas flow velocity, and the ability of water in the wetting phase to occupy space was relatively weak. Due to the inability to measure the gas flow velocity in the pores, it cannot be quantified here, but the trend remained stable. Therefore, under the dual effect of slow injection and fast production, there are relatively more water-lock points, which was also shown in Figure 9. High-rate and high-pressure gas injection can lead to discontinuous gas paths and the formation of water-locks. However, the pore medium was a wetting phase, and the viscosity of water was much higher than that of gas. Therefore, high-rate gas production caused rapid extraction, while the water phase at the gas-water boundaries occupied the throats. Slow gas production caused the water phase retreated and occupied the throats for a longer period, further led to more water-lock points. Therefore, the influence of injection and production rates on the gas-containing spaces is significant, and the water-lock caused by different injection and production rates was the main factor affecting the gas-containing spaces.

FIGURE 9

The research has proven that slow injection and fast production could effectively improve gas storage spaces. To further clarify the efficiency of the impact of injection and production rates on gas storage boundaries, this study compared the changes in gas-containing pore spaces at different time periods under slow injection and fast production conditions. The gas storage dynamic boundaries, which indicate by the utilization of gas-containing pore spaces, showed rapid increase followed by slow increase (Figure 10). One of the reasons was that the continuous increase of gas-containing spaces and the total amount of compressed gas, the increasing number of binding points at the gas-water boundary, where many capillary valves hinder the expansion of the dynamic boundary was another reason. A more noteworthy pattern was that as the number of injection and production rounds increased, the efficiency of reached the maximum gas content efficiency at different time periods continuously decreased. For example, within the same time period (taking 28–35 min as an example), the first round of injection and production reached the maximum capacity quickly, while the fourth round took longer time. This further proved that as the number of injection and production rounds increased, the number of water-lock points in the gas storage spaces increased, and the increasing number of water-lock points corresponds to more capillary valves, resulted in the subsequent injection of gas playing a more significant role in expanding the edges. The extension time corresponded to slow injection and fast production was relatively long. Due to the presence of the starting pressure of gas-water movement, the available pore spaces at the boundary also increased, resulted in a more significant improvement in the gas storage boundaries. The above analysis indicates that slow injection and fast production have significant benefits in improving the dynamic boundary of gas storages. The injection and production rates are important influencing factors of the dynamic boundaries of gas storages.

FIGURE 10

3.5 Analysis of the dynamic mechanism of gas transportation

For a single pore throat, there are two cases: Case 1: θ-β>90°, under gas-water drainage conditions, the gas-water interface stays at the junction of pores and throats (at the throat entrance), where the resistance is the highest. In this case, the gas enters as resistance and retreats as resistance, resulting in a dilemma (Figure 11A). Case 2: θ-β<90°, under gas-water drainage conditions, the gas-water interface stays at the junction of pores and throats (at the throat entrance), where the resistance is the highest. In this case, the gas retreats as resistance and advances as power, making it difficult to advance (Figure 11B).

FIGURE 11

Under strong hydrophilic conditions, due to the strong adsorption of water on the pore surfaces, the water phase tends to protrude along the corners of the rectangle, forming the corner flow (Alizard et al., 2010). This phenomenon is due to the preferential path provided by the corner region for the flow of the water phase, allowing the water phase to pass through these areas more quickly (Koplik and Banavar, 1995; Liu et al., 2022). The formation of corner flow can lead to heterogeneous distributions of the water phase in the pores, which may hinder the effective flow and storage of gas, thus adversely affecting the performance of the gas storage. In practical operations, it is necessary to pay attention to the corner flow phenomenon under strong water wet conditions and take corresponding measures to optimize fluid distribution and improve the injection-production efficiency of the gas storage (Figure 12).

FIGURE 12

For the radius of curvature, there is a formula:where r is radius, h is corner flow thickness, and α is the angle see in Figure 12.

We know the capillary pressure formula (Masoodi and Pillai, 2012; Larson and Morrow, 1981; Li et al., 2022):where σ is the interfacial tension, θ is the contact angle.

Combine the above two formulas to get:

Therefore, strong hydrophilic was corresponding to small the pore angle with thin water film. In this situation, the capillary effect would become more obvious. While in the hydrophobic situation, the gas is displaced along the center, and the pores that the gas reaches are basically driven to be relatively clean (Figure 13).

FIGURE 13

When there is a simultaneous distribution of gas and water, there are also two cases: Case 1: When the pores are filled with water, there is only one meniscus with additional pressure, and the gas-driven water resistance is small (Figure 14A). The pressure is shown as follows:

FIGURE 14

Case 2: When there are bubbles in the pores, there are three menisci, and the gas enters the pore through the throat with a larger curvature, which results in a smaller curvature. The additional pressure generated by the latter is much greater than that of the former, making it difficult for the gas in the pores to be utilized (Figure 14B). Capillary resistance of gas drive:where R represent pore radius. Since R >> r, the above formula can be rewritten as:

The above analysis showed that the wettability difference is one of the microscopic mechanisms that cause the spatial difference of gas content at different injection and production rates. However, at present, only chip with unique wettability has been studied, and we are developing chips with different wettability by means of surface modification.

3.6 Brine movement behavior assessment in liquid-liquid system

In order to better illustrated the reliability of large-scale chips in the study of the law of gas-water movements, we conducted the liquid-liquid system experiment. According to the two key influencing factor indexes obtained from gas-water tests, namely, injection rates and wettability, we carried out water flooding experiments under different injection rates and wettability conditions. The results showed that the capillary fingering was prominent at low speed, and the viscous displacement was enhanced with the increase of injection rate, but too high displacement rate led to more oil trapped by water, resulted in many beads like residual oil (Supplementary Figure S1). With the decrease of hydrophilic degree, the water phase sweep increased, and the water wet intensity is high, which is easier to form a wall film flow, causing water to rush along the wall, forming a thicker water film, and the oil displacement efficiency in a single hole is higher (Supplementary Figure S2).

At the same time, we also statistically analyzed the quantitative data of oil displacement efficiency under different injection production rates. With the increase of injection rate, oil displacement efficiency increased first and then decreased (Supplementary Figure S3A). This is due to the dispersion of oil droplets caused by high-speed water injection and the low recovery of residual oil. In the range of hydrophilic, the contact angle was negatively correlated with oil displacement efficiency, that is, the more hydrophilic the reservoir was, the higher the oil displacement efficiency was (Supplementary Figure S3A). This is consistent with the understanding of gas-water system: the recovery of non-wetting phase is closely related to the degree of affinity between non-wetting phase and wall. These studies supplement our understanding of gas water systems, and also showed that our large-scale chips can be applied to various fluid systems.

4 Conclusion

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