Polymer Flooding at an Adverse Mobility Ratio: Acceleration of Oil Production by Crossflow into Water Channels

Salmo, Iselin Cecilie; Pettersen, Øystein; Skauge, Arne

doi:10.1021/acs.energyfuels.7b00515

Cited by 28 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…into the path of least resistance). Salmo andSkauge (2015, 2017) derived relative permeabilities by history matching experiments dominated by crossflow. Seright et al (2018) also noted that a polymer with p = 25 w greatly improved the oil displacement by ~ 60%+ for an oil with o = 1600 w .…”

Section: Simulation Of Polymer Flooding Of the Unstable Water → Oil Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Modelling of Immiscible Viscous Fingering in Two-Phase Flow in Porous Media

et al. 2020

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Viscous fingering in porous media is an instability which occurs when a low-viscosity injected fluid displaces a much more viscous resident fluid, under miscible or immiscible conditions. Immiscible viscous fingering is more complex and has been found to be difficult to simulate numerically and is the main focus of this paper. Many researchers have identified the source of the problem of simulating realistic immiscible fingering as being in the numerics of the process, and a large number of studies have appeared applying high-order numerical schemes to the problem with some limited success. We believe that this view is incorrect and that the solution to the problem of modelling immiscible viscous fingering lies in the physics and related mathematical formulation of the problem. At the heart of our approach is what we describe as the resolution of the “M-paradox”, where M is the mobility ratio, as explained below. In this paper, we present a new 4-stage approach to the modelling of realistic two-phase immiscible viscous fingering by (1) formulating the problem based on the experimentally observed fractional flows in the fingers, which we denote as $$ f_{\rm w}^{*} $$ f w ∗ , and which is the chosen simulation input; (2) from the infinite choice of relative permeability (RP) functions, $$ k_{\rm rw}^{*} $$ k rw ∗ and $$ k_{\rm ro}^{*} $$ k ro ∗ , which yield the same $$ f_{\rm w}^{*} $$ f w ∗ , we choose the set which maximises the total mobility function, $$ \lambda_{\text{T}}^{{}} $$ λ T (where $$ \lambda_{\text{T}}^{{}} = \lambda_{\text{o}}^{{}} + \lambda_{\text{w}}^{{}} $$ λ T = λ o + λ w ), i.e. minimises the pressure drop across the fingering system; (3) the permeability structure of the heterogeneous domain (the porous medium) is then chosen based on a random correlated field (RCF) in this case; and finally, (4) using a sufficiently fine numerical grid, but with simple transport numerics. Using our approach, realistic immiscible fingering can be simulated using elementary numerical methods (e.g. single-point upstreaming) for the solution of the two-phase fluid transport equations. The method is illustrated by simulating the type of immiscible viscous fingering observed in many experiments in 2D slabs of rock where water displaces very viscous oil where the oil/water viscosity ratio is $$ (\mu_{\text{o}} /\mu_{\text{w}} ) = 1600 $$ ( μ o / μ w ) = 1600 . Simulations are presented for two example cases, for different levels of water saturation in the main viscous finger (i.e. for 2 different underlying $$ f_{\rm w}^{*} $$ f w ∗ functions) produce very realistic fingering patterns which are qualitatively similar to observations in several respects, as discussed. Additional simulations of tertiary polymer flooding are also presented for which good experimental data are available for displacements in 2D rock slabs (Skauge et al., in: Presented at SPE Improved Oil Recovery Symposium, 14–18 April, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, SPE-154292-MS, 2012. 10.2118/154292-MS, EAGE 17th European Symposium on Improved Oil Recovery, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2013; Vik et al., in: Presented at SPE Europec featured at 80th EAGE Conference and Exhibition, Copenhagen, Denmark, SPE-190866-MS, 2018. 10.2118/190866-MS). The finger patterns for the polymer displacements and the magnitude and timing of the oil displacement response show excellent qualitative agreement with experiment, and indeed, they fully explain the observations in terms of an enhanced viscous crossflow mechanism (Sorbie and Skauge, in: Proceedings of the EAGE 20th Symposium on IOR, Pau, France, 2019). As a sensitivity, we also present some example results where the adjusted fractional flow ($$ f_{\rm w}^{*} $$ f w ∗ ) can give a chosen frontal shock saturation, $$ S_{\rm wf}^{*} $$ S wf ∗ , but at different frontal mobility ratios, $$ M(S_{\rm wf}^{*} ) $$ M ( S wf ∗ ) . Finally, two tests on the robustness of the method are presented on the effect of both rescaling the permeability field and on grid coarsening. It is demonstrated that our approach is very robust to both permeability field rescaling, i.e. where the (kmax/kmin) ratio in the RCF goes from 100 to 3, and also under numerical grid coarsening.

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Section: Simulation Of Polymer Flooding Of the Unstable Water → Oil Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Modelling of Immiscible Viscous Fingering in Two-Phase Flow in Porous Media

et al. 2020

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“…CMG‐STARS is useful in modelling the flooding experiment, with good agreement between experimental and simulated data. 17,37,68,74 . Figure 12a–c show the oil saturation, water cut and recovery factor profiles for different chemical fluid compositions respectively.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical simulation of enhanced oil recovery studies for aqueous gemini surfactant‐polymer‐nanoparticle systems

Pal

2020

AIChE Journal

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The article investigates the efficacy of gemini surfactant/polymer/nanoparticle flooding on chemical EOR. Initially, physicochemical behavior of aqueous chemical fluids were investigated via interfacial tension reduction, wettability alteration, adsorption, viscosity moderation and oil displacement experiments. During compositional analysis, Cartesian model with specified grid properties, injection flow-rate, well pattern, and rock-fluid characteristics was developed using CMG-STARS tool. Contour map analyses showed that oil saturation decreased from~80% (initial) to 31.96%, 30.68%, and 29.30% after {14-6-14 GS + chase water}, {14-6-14 GS + PHPA + chase water}, and {14-6-14 GS + PHPA + SiO 2 chase water} flooding respectively. Tertiary recoveries of 15-19% were achieved, depending on injected fluid composition. Experimental data were history matched via CMOST tool to achieve good matching of simulated results. The CMG flooding simulator provides a holistic approach to investigate oil displacement profiles, assess flooding recovery capabilities with near-accuracy and predict the feasibility of proposed chemical EOR projects.

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“…Pye and Sandiford [1,2] first noted that the mobility of brine solution could be substantially reduced when the polymer was added. Until now, the researches concerning polymer flooding have matured enough [3][4][5][6], the mechanism of conformance control and mobility control has also been clearly understood by laboratory experiment [7]. The permeability of the reservoir decreased by increasing the viscosity of the water phase and the retention of polymer in the reservoir.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental Study on the Physical Performance and Flow Behavior of Decorated Polyacrylamide for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Liang

Liu

et al. 2019

Energies

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With the rapid growth of energy consumption, enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods are continually emerging, the most effective and widely used was polymer flooding. However, the shortcomings were gradually exposed. A novel decorated polyacrylamide might be a better alternative than polymer. In this work, the molecular structure and the properties reflecting the viscosity of decorated polyacrylamide, interfacial tension, and emulsification were examined. In order to better understand the interactions between decorated polyacrylamide and oil as well as the displacement mechanism, the displacement experiment were conducted in the etched-glass microscale model. Moreover, the coreflooding comparison experiments between decorated polyacrylamide and polymer were performed to investigate the displacement effect. The statistical analysis showed that the decorated polyacrylamide has excellent characteristics of salt tolerance, viscosity stability, and viscosification like polymer. Besides, the ability to reduce the interfacial tension in order 10 −1 and emulsification, which were more similar to surfactant. Therefore, the decorated polyacrylamide was a multifunctional polymer. The displacement process captured by camera illustrated that the decorated polyacrylamide flooded oil mainly by means of 'pull and drag', 'entrainment', and 'bridging', based on the mechanism of viscosifying, emulsifying, and viscoelasticity. The results of the coreflooding experiment indicated that the recovery of decorated polyacrylamide can be improved by approximately 11-16% after water flooding when the concentration was more than 800 mg/L, which was higher than that of conventional polymer flooding. It should be mentioned that a new injection mode of 'concentration reduction multi-slug' was first proposed, and it obtained an exciting result of increasing oil production and decreasing water-cut, the effect of conformance control was more significant.

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Polymer Flooding at an Adverse Mobility Ratio: Acceleration of Oil Production by Crossflow into Water Channels

Cited by 28 publications

References 36 publications

On the Modelling of Immiscible Viscous Fingering in Two-Phase Flow in Porous Media

On the Modelling of Immiscible Viscous Fingering in Two-Phase Flow in Porous Media

Numerical simulation of enhanced oil recovery studies for aqueous gemini surfactant‐polymer‐nanoparticle systems

Experimental Study on the Physical Performance and Flow Behavior of Decorated Polyacrylamide for Enhanced Oil Recovery

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