Modeling of surfactant and surfactant–polymer flooding for enhanced oil recovery using STARS (CMG) software

Abstract

Chemical flooding methods are now getting importance in enhanced oil recovery to recover the trapped oil after conventional recovery. Investigation has been made to characterize the surfactant solution in terms of its ability to reduce the surface tension and the interaction between surfactant and polymer in its aqueous solution. A series of flooding experiments have been carried out to find the additional recovery using surfactant and surfactantpolymer slug. Approximately 0.5 pore volume (PV) surfactant (sodium dodecylsulfate) slug was injected in surfactant flooding, while 0.3 PV surfactant slug and 0.2 PV polymer (partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide) slug were injected for surfactant-polymer flooding. In each case, chase water was used to maintain the pressure gradient. The present work sought to determine whether or not a commercially available simulator could accurately simulate results from core flooding experiments. The adherence to physically realistic input values with respect to experimentally derived parameters was of primary importance during the development of the models. When specific values were not available for certain simulation parameters, a reasonable range of assumptions was made and both the water cut and cumulative oil production were successfully matched. Ultimately, understanding how to simulate the surfactant and polymer behavior on a core scale will improve the ability to model polymer floods on the field scale.

Surfactant-Polymer Coreflood Simulation and Uncertainty Analysis Derived from Laboratory Study

“…Because of this characteristic the surfactant is considered to be an EOR agent. The use of surfactant-polymer gives more recovered oil than a surfactant injection only, due to the synergistic contribution of IFT reduction by the surfactant and mobility ratio reduction by the polymer [3,5]. A previous study on the effect of alkali on alkaline-surfactant-polymer (ASP) flooding showed that additional oil recovery could be obtained by increasing the concentration of alkali due to insitu formation of surfactant [6].…”

Numerical studies on the effects of various complicated barrier configurations on sweep efficiency in surfactant/polymer flooding

“…Furthermore, they figured out the main factors affecting to the success of SP flooding process including connectivity between injector and producer, the designed properties of SP system, and the injected chemical volume. The experiment combined simulation works of Rai et al [16] again confirmed the favorable uses of surfactant-polymer flooding with an achievement of additional 24% oil recovery, and the employments of surfactant or surfactant-polymer decreasing water cut substantially, which reflect the inverse relationship between water cut and chemical flooding. By using CMG (STARS) software for matching the experimental data of chemical flooding, Sinha et al [17] concluded the good matching results between the simulator and laboratory data for SP flooding; however, the deviations of matching data are slightly higher for ASP flooding, which demonstrates the considerably complex mechanisms as well as the high level of uncertainty when simulating ASP flooding compared with SP flooding.…”

Numerical Approach for Enhanced Oil Recovery with Surfactant Flooding using STARS (CMG)

“…Then, the respective experiments were simulated by STARS (CMG) software. It was found that the ultimate results of the simulator software and the experiments conducted matched each other, for instance the water cut and the cumulative production of oil (Rai et al, 2015). The capability to model a surfactant flooding event on a field scale can be optimised by understanding how to simulate the behaviour of surfactants during flooding in a laboratory scale.…”

“…The power of this simulator in creating a model for both laboratory and field-scale while taking complicated chemical behaviours into account makes it popular in the industry (Rai et al, 2015). Up till now, there are already a few publications using STARS (CMG) software (Chaipornkaew M & T, 2013;Santos MD, 2011).…”