Mechanisms of microscopic displacement during enhanced oil recovery in mixed-wet rocks revealed using direct numerical simulation
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Akai, Takashi
Alhammadi, Amer M
Blunt, Martin J
Bijeljic, Branko
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
We demonstrate how to use numerical simulation models directly on micro-CT images to understand the impact of several enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods on microscopic displacement efficiency. To describe the physics with high-fidelity, we calibrate the model to match a water-flooding experiment conducted on the same rock sample (Akai et al. in Transp Porous Media 127(2):393–414, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11242-018-1198-8). First we show comparisons of water-flooding processes between the experiment and simulation, focusing on the characteristics of remaining oil after water-flooding in a mixed-wet state. In both the experiment and simulation, oil is mainly present as thin oil layers confined to pore walls. Then, taking this calibrated simulation model as a base case, we examine the application of three EOR processes: low salinity water-flooding, surfactant flooding and polymer flooding. In low salinity water-flooding, the increase in oil recovery was caused by displacement of oil from the centers of pores without leaving oil layers behind. Surfactant flooding gave the best improvement in the recovery factor of 16% by reducing the amount of oil trapped by capillary forces. Polymer flooding indicated improvement in microscopic sweep efficiency at a higher capillary number, while it did not show an improvement at a low capillary number. Overall, this work quantifies the impact of different EOR processes on local displacement efficiency and establishes a workflow based on combining experiment and modeling to design optimal recovery processes.
Date Issued
2019-12-01
Date Acceptance
2019-09-09
Citation
Transport in Porous Media, 2019, 130 (3), pp.731-749
ISSN
0169-3913
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Start Page
731
End Page
749
Journal / Book Title
Transport in Porous Media
Volume
130
Issue
3
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide
a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide
a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Identifier
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11242-019-01336-5
Subjects
0904 Chemical Engineering
0905 Civil Engineering
0102 Applied Mathematics
Environmental Engineering
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2019-09-25