Water-soluble polyacrylamides have often been used to modify flow response in various water-based technologies and industrial processes, including paints, water treatment, paper manufacturing, and chemical enhanced oil recovery. Polymers are...
Due to increased energy demand, it is vital to enhance the recovery from existing oilfields. Polymer flooding is the most frequently used chemical enhanced oil recovery (cEOR) method in field applications that increases the oil sweep and displacement efficiencies. In recent years, there has been growing interest to assess the use of polymer flooding in an increasing number of field applications. This is due to the improved properties of polymers at high-salinity and high-temperature conditions and an increased understanding of the transport mechanisms of water-soluble polymers in porous media. In this review, we present an overview of the latest research into the application of polymers for cEOR, including mechanisms of oil recovery improvement and transport mechanisms in porous media. We focus on the recent advances that have been made to develop polymers that are suitable for high-salinity and high-temperature conditions and shed light on new insights into the flow of water-soluble polymers in porous media. We observed that the viscoelastic behavior of polymers in porous media (e.g., shear thickening and elastic turbulence) is the most recently debated polymer flow mechanism in cEOR applications. Moreover, advanced water-soluble polymers, including hydrophobically modified polymers and salt- and temperature-tolerant modified polyacrylamides, have shown promising results at high-salinity and high-temperature conditions.
Application of solar energy compared to conventional gas-burning boilers for steam generation in thermal Enhanced Oil Recovery processes is a newly attended technology, which brings significant benefits to the petroleum industry through environmental and economical aspects. This technique is especially designed for the regions in which gas-burning steam generation is not viable in large scale. The objective of this study is to investigate about viability of using solar energy to generate steam instead of using conventional steam generators in a Venezuelan extra heavy oil reservoir. Limited gas production policy of the Venezuelan government is the major challenge for utilizing gas steam generators for extra heavy oil reservoirs in this country. Besides, the efficient daylight duration, economic and environmental advantages, are the main features to propose solar-generated-steam injection in Venezuelan extra heavy oil reservoirs. In this study, various scenarios of steam injection on Hamaca-Venezuelan heavy oil reservoirhave been investigated using commercial thermal simulator software and the main results of oil production for similar time periods (5 years) are compared. To compensate the energy needed for the steam generators during the night time, dual types steam generators were proposed to utilize solar and fossil energies during day-time and night time respectively. The simulation results for this extra heavy oil reservoir indicated that the oil production was not significantly improved when solar method is used regardless of the amount of the nightly injection of fossil-fuel generated steam for flow back prevention. This finding illustrated high economic efficiency for solar-generated steam injection compared to dual type (solar and fossil-fuel) steam generator method. Furthermore, the results indicated that in typical imposed cyclic steam injections in integrated solar thermal projects, there is no significant difference in oil productions in various scenarios with different pattern and rate of steam injection if the total amount of injected steam is constant. In addition, this study shows the significant reduction of CO 2 and Sulfur Oxides emissions if this new technology is implemented. Besides, various scenarios (with and without natural gas backup) were designed for exact day light duration profile in vicinity of the reservoir in order to optimize the oil production as well as accurate economic and environmental evaluation for each scenario.
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