Review on microfluidic studies for EOR application

Abstract

All the time the flow of fluids happens below the surface of the earth. These flow processes can only be imagined, but not be fully visualised on how fluid flow behaviour occurs though the porous medium of the rocks. Hence comes the play of microfluidic micromodels. These are a transparent version of slices (2 dimensional) porous structure of rocks such as sandstone duplicated onto materials such as glass, polymers and silicon wafers. Fluids such as crude oil, surfactant and polymer solutions and gases such as carbon dioxide (CO 2) are injected through special pumps into these transparent micromodels. The flow patterns and behaviours hence developed inside the micromodels are studied and analysed. Micromodels have helped in different branches of science such as medicine, genetics, liquid channelling and enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The concern of this paper is to study the flow behaviour and EOR in micromodels. Micromodels can be made to represent a micro version of a partially saturated rock with crude oil. The various chemical EOR processes such as surfactant flooding, polymer flooding, gas flooding injected into crude oil filled micromodels with water saturation is studied. The advancement of front developed between displacing and displaced fluids, the fingering effect, the presence of high permeability streaks is observed. Also the breakthrough of the flood front is analysed from the various experiments reviewed. This review paper is undertaken so as to help researchers find a consolidated and concise literature of the trends and developments in microfluidics especially in EOR.

Development of a Microfluidic Method to Study Enhanced Oil Recovery by Low Salinity Water Flooding

“…Such a technique is well-suited for visualization and fundamental studies of the phenomena governing oil mobilization and displacement at length scales where capillary forces dominate. 21 − 23 With microfluidics, one can simulate pore networks in oil reservoirs and provide high-resolution data for a better understanding of liquid front propagation and fluid displacement to increase sweep efficiency and minimize undesired effects such as viscous fingering.…”

The Present and Future Role of Microfluidics for Protein and Peptide-Based Therapeutics and Diagnostics

“…A breakdown of common attributes present in MFs is shown in Figure 2. Since its discovery, MFs have been used for various applications, even applications outside of medicine, for example, improving industrial extraction methods of crude oil [22] or the fabrication of complex electrical components [23]. However, its primary use is within medical, biomedical and genetic fields, as its adaptiveness lends itself to generating highquality results over a broad spectrum of operations.…”

Visualization of Polymer Retention Mechanisms in Porous Media Using Microfluidics

“…On the other hand, retention by mechanical entrapment occurs when larger polymer molecules become lodged within narrow flow channels. Mechanical retention is a function of the ratio between the effective hydrodynamic radius of the polymer and the rock pore-throat radius, which is more pronounced in low permeability reservoir rocks (M. T. Szabo 1975;Gogarty 1967;Dominguez and Willhite 1977;Smith 1970). Oversized polymers may damage the formation, and therefore the proper polymer molecular size should be carefully selected (Sorbie 1991).…”