An Integrated Oil Production Enhancement Technology Based on Waterflooding Energy Recovery

Abstract

A new integrated oil production enhancement technology based on water-flooding energy recovery is proposed. After providing an extensive review of the existing scientific and technical literature on this subject, the proposed integrated technology is described together with the related process flow diagram, the criteria used to select a target facility for its implementation and the outcomes of the laboratory studies conducted to analyze emulsion formation and separation kinetics. Moreover, the outcomes of numerical simulations performed using Ansys CFX software are also presented. According to these results, using the proposed approach the incremental oil production may reach 1.2 t/day (with a 13% increase) and more, even at low flow rates (less than 10 t/day), thereby providing evidence for the benefits associated with this integrated technology.