Life-cycle assessment of water injection into hydrocarbon reservoirs using exergy concept

Farajzadeh, R.; Zaal, Cae; Hoek, Paul van den; Bruining, J.

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.07.034

Cited by 32 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The unit CO 2 emission (kgCO 2 /bbl oil) is the product of (3) www.nature.com/scientificreports/ the unit exergy invested and the average emission rate of the electricity production in the location of the project, which is assumed to be the Middle East (with CO 2 intensity 650 gCO 2 /kWh) 26 . The major exergy investment in water-injection projects relates to the circulation of water 7,14 . As a result, the unit exergy investment strongly depends on the water cut.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the case considered here the amount of produced gas is negligible. The produced oil is assumed to have a specific exergetic value of MJ/kg 7 , 14 . The exergy of the produced water (with and without chemicals) is assumed to be negligible.…”

Section: Exergy Streamsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A significant portion of the produced hydrocarbon energy is consumed for fluid handling, injection of fluids, water treatment, refining, and its production, depending on the recovery mechanism 5 , 6 . In practice, towards the end of field lifetime, the energy required for fluid circulation may exceed the energy obtained from hydrocarbons 5 , 7 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is a direct correlation between the CO 2 intensity of the oil production by water injection and field water cut. Above water cuts of 90%, a large fraction of the energy obtained from oil is used in handling the injected and produced water, which leads to large amounts of CO 2 emission 7 , 14 . The wide application of water injection means that reducing the carbon intensity of aging or mature oilfields with large water cuts is an essential step towards cleaner or low-carbon production of hydrocarbons 15 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Chemical enhanced oil recovery and the dilemma of more and cleaner energy

Farajzadeh

Kahrobaei

Eftekhari

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A method based on the concept of exergy-return on exergy-investment is developed to determine the energy efficiency and CO2 intensity of polymer and surfactant enhanced oil recovery techniques. Exergy is the useful work obtained from a system at a given thermodynamics state. The main exergy investment in oil recovery by water injection is related to the circulation of water required to produce oil. At water cuts (water fraction in the total liquid produced) greater than 90%, more than 70% of the total invested energy is spent on injection and lift pumps, resulting in large CO2 intensity for the produced oil. It is shown that injection of polymer with or without surfactant can considerably reduce CO2 intensity of the mature waterflood projects by decreasing the volume of produced water and the exergy investment associated with its circulation. In the field examples considered in this paper, a barrel of oil produced by injection of polymer has 2–5 times less CO2 intensity compared to the baseline waterflood oil. Due to large manufacturing exergy of the synthetic polymers and surfactants, in some cases, the unit exergy investment for production of oil could be larger than that of the waterflooding. It is asserted that polymer injection into reservoirs with large water cut can be a solution for two major challenges of the energy transition period: (1) meet the global energy demand via an increase in oil recovery and (2) reduce the CO2 intensity of oil production (more and cleaner energy).

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Exergy Streamsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Chemical enhanced oil recovery and the dilemma of more and cleaner energy

Farajzadeh

Kahrobaei

Eftekhari

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Accordingly, the energy intensity and CO 2 footprint of the production schemes should also be considered during the decision-making and optimization processes. 27,28 Thus, the optimization techniques should be modied with the objective functions to reduce the energy consumption and the eventual CO 2 emissions of the oil-recovery processes, from both surface and subsurface activities. Here, we adapt the concept of thermoeconomics (or exergoeconomics) [29][30][31] and extend its application to oil extraction techniques.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life-cycle production optimization of hydrocarbon fields: thermoeconomics perspective

Farajzadeh

Kahrobaei

Zwart

et al. 2019

Sustainable Energy Fuels

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We suggest alternative objective functions based on the concept of thermoeconomics (or exergoeconomics) that could be used for simultaneous maximization of economics and energy efficiency of oil-production systems. The suggested functions are evaluated for an oil reservoir, where water is injected to improve its recovery factor. We find that life-cycle optimization of water-injection projects in terms of net present value (NPV) and net cumulative exergy (NCE) leads to consistent results.We show that managing reservoirs based on a long-term objective leads to significant reduction in their CO 2 footprint. For oil production by water injection, commitment to reduce CO 2 emission provides an opportunity to maximize the NPV of these projects. The sustainability of water injection into hydrocarbon reservoirs is highly dependent on the volumes of the injected and produced liquids. Above a critical water cut (80% in this study), the energy efficiency of the project decreases dramatically, and its CO 2 footprint increases exponentially. Fig. 11 Cumulative CO 2 emission as a function of (right) time and (left) water cut. 3058 | Sustainable Energy Fuels, 2019, 3, 3050-3060 This journal is

show abstract

Effect of CO2 tax on energy use in oil production: waterflooding optimization under different emission costs

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Tackling emissions from hydrocarbon production is a necessity because hydrocarbon production will last for a prolonged time. As a popular hydrocarbon production method, waterflooding operation is energy-intensive and accounts for significant CO2 emissions. This article investigates the effect of CO2 tax level on recovery process of already producing fields with waterflooding. Our methodology is waterflooding optimization in reservoir simulation models, specifically optimizing well-controls. Unlike traditional studies, our optimization objective comprises two components: the profitability of hydrocarbon production and an additional tax proportional to CO2 emissions. The associated CO2 emissions is estimated using a scheme developed upon an integrated model of reservoir, surface network, and topside facility. We examine our methodology on two cases with heterogeneous reservoir models. In each case, we optimize multi-scenarios enforcing different CO2 tax rates. The solutions indicate that imposing a higher CO2 tax rate reduces both emissions and hydrocarbon production. The fractional reduction of oil produced is however smaller than the emission reduction. While an increased tax rate drives the topside equipment to operate at higher efficiencies, the main effects of a higher tax rate are reduced water injection and more efficient subsurface drainage. There is a non-linear relationship between the reduced production and emissions. For increasing tax levels there are diminishing returns on lower emissions, reflecting reduced opportunities for emission reduction by changes in the drainage strategy. Some increments on the tax rate will therefore have negligible impacts on the optimal drainage strategy, and hence an adverse effect on the profitability with negligible emission reduction.

show abstract

Life-cycle assessment of water injection into hydrocarbon reservoirs using exergy concept

Cited by 32 publications

References 27 publications

Chemical enhanced oil recovery and the dilemma of more and cleaner energy

Chemical enhanced oil recovery and the dilemma of more and cleaner energy

Life-cycle production optimization of hydrocarbon fields: thermoeconomics perspective

Effect of CO2 tax on energy use in oil production: waterflooding optimization under different emission costs

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About