Numerical Simulation of a Petroleum Reservoir: A Case Study of Water Injection by the Application of Isothermal and Thermal Methods for Heavy Oils

Abstract

Petroleum industry has put efforts on developing technologies capable of increasing oil recovery and taking maximum potential of reservoirs. The current paper proposes a comparison of water injection scenarios in a reservoir of dead oil with homogenous, isotropic, and no failure porous medium. Four case studies were set up with specific temperatures and densities for water and reservoir to provide information about the main parameters related to conventional oil recovery methods. The scheme injection is staggered lines, with an injection well centered on the reservoir and four production wells around it. The simulations were run on ANSYS CFX software and results demonstrated an improvement of 31.26% on behalf of the thermal method for an 11 °API oil-type and 10.58% of improvement for the thermal method and a 17 °API oil-type. Therefore, thermal methods proved to be more efficient for heavy oils than for light oils.