Effects of core size and surfactant choice on fluid saturation development in surfactant/Polymer corefloods
Author(s)
Rovelli, Andrea
Brodie, James
Rashid, Bilal
Tay, Weparn
Pini, Ronny
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Surfactant/polymer flooding allows for a significant increase in oil recovered at both laboratory and field scales. Limitations in application at the reservoir scale are, however, present and can be associated with both the complexity of the underlying displacement process and the time-intensive nature of the up-scaling workflow. Pivotal to this workflow are corefloods which serve to both validate the extent of oil recovery and extract modeling parameters used in upscaling. To enhance the understanding of the evolution of the saturation distribution within the rock sample, we present the utilization of X-ray computed tomography to image six distinct surfactant/polymer corefloods. In doing so, we visualize the formation and propagation of an oil bank by reconstructing multidimensional saturation maps. We conduct experiments on three distinct core sizes and two different surfactants, an SBDS/isbutanol formulation and an L-145-10s 90 formulation, in order to decouple the effect of these two parameters on the flow behavior observed in situ. We note that the oil production post oil bank breakthrough is primarily influenced by the surfactant choice, with the SDBS/isobutanol formulation displaying longer tailing production of a low oil cut. On the other hand, the core size dominated the extent of self-similarity of the saturation profiles with smaller cores showing less overlap in the self-similarity profiles. Consequently, we highlight the difference in applicability of a fractional flow approach to larger and smaller cores for upscaling parameter extraction and thus provide guidance for corefloods where direct imaging is not available.
Date Issued
2024-02-15
Date Acceptance
2024-01-12
Citation
Energy and Fuels, 2024, 38 (4), pp.2844-2854
ISSN
0887-0624
Publisher
American Chemical Society
Start Page
2844
End Page
2854
Journal / Book Title
Energy and Fuels
Volume
38
Issue
4
Copyright Statement
© 2024 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society. This publication is licensed under
CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
License URL
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2024-01-26