The study of two-phase immiscible flow in porous media using electrokinetics is important in different fields including the remediation of hydrocarbon contaminated soils and enhanced oil recovery. While electrokinetic technology has been traditionally used for treatment and decontamination of hydrocarbon polluted sites, electrically enhanced oil recovery (EEOR) is relatively new. Although a few laboratory and field experiments have investigated the potential promise of the EEOR method, further investigation is necessary to better understand the fundamentals and the importance of different parameters/ processes that affect the oil production in this method. This study presents a numerical investigation of two-phase flow in EEOR method in an attempt to provide insight into the feasibility of, and the important parameters involved in this method. A sensitivity analysis is performed on important parameters involved in EEOR combined with water flooding. Most of the investigated reservoir and operational parameters were found to be significant and critical to the transport phenomena controlling the oil production. In addition, the results showed that the applied electrical gradient involved in EEOR combined with water flooding contributes to a small increase in oil production.
In the domain of shale gas extraction, water is used during the process of fracturing the shale in order to retrieve the gas trapped in the formation. A portion of the injected water is recovered during the initial extraction of the gas, which is known as flow-back water. Electrodialysis is an alternative for onsite treatment (or pre-treatment) and recycling of the flow-back water, which has gained more attention in recent years. The method is based on an electrically assisted membrane process for separation of salts from the water. Flow-back water has very high concentrations of dissolved solids (e.g. calcium, barium, magnesium, and iron) and electrodialysis is highly susceptible to these cations and has great potential to be used as a desalination process in such aggressive environment. In this study, the efficiency of the electrodialysis as a desalination process for flow-back water was investigated using samples of flow-back from Marcellus shale wells in the laboratory scale. The preliminary findings in the experimental evaluation of the method indicated a removal of total dissolved solids of more than 90%.
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