1887
  1. Home
  2. Conferences
  3. Conference Proceedings
  4. IOR 2019 – 20th European Symposium on Improved Oil Recovery
  5. Conference paper

Abstract

Summary

The injection of alkali in acidic viscous oils is known to promote the in-situ formation of emulsions during chemical oil recovery. Naphthenic acid components react with the alkali to form in-situ surfactants, which support oil emulsification at the water-oil interface. Experimental observations confirm that emulsification and transport of the dispersed oil in presence of polymer can improve oil recovery significantly.

In this work a new mechanistic non-equilibrium model is proposed to simulate Alkali-Polymer processes (AP) for viscous oil. The model takes into account emulsion generation kinetics, polymer and emulsion non Newtonian viscosity through a straightforward modelling strategy. In this model, the emulsified oil is treated as a dispersed component in water phase, while water mobility is represented by an apparent water viscosity containing dispersed oil and polymer. Shear rate effects were considered for both polymer and emulsion viscosities and viscous fingering was included using the effective fingering model developed recently at the University of Texas to retrieve the initial condition after secondary water flood/polymer flood process.

Seven Alkali-Polymer (AP) corefloods were successfully history-matched using this new approach to interpret AP corefloods mainly as a tertiary recovery process. Different alkali types were evaluated at different concentrations and slug sizes. In all cases, a high molecular weight partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) was used as polymer. Oil viscosity was between 2000–3500 cP @ 50°C.

Numerical results show that the proposed model is capable of appropriately matching oil production, total pressure drop and oil cut, when the oil bank formed at emulsion breakthrough is composed by non-emulsified oil and dispersed oil. Kinetics obtained by history match indicate that emulsions can be generated at different rates depending on the choice of the alkali and that emulsion properties will also change depending on the alkali type. This development provides to our knowledge, one of the first alkali-polymer models to take into account the unstable displacement framework and modified water phase non Newtonian viscosity including emulsion and polymer.

© EAGE Publications BV
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.201900112
2019-04-08
2024-04-20

  • From This Site

    /content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.201900112
    dcterms_title,dcterms_subject,pub_keyword
    -contentType:Journal -contentType:Contributor -contentType:Concept -contentType:Institution
    10
    5
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Arhuoma, M., Yang, D., Dong, M., Li, H., Idem, R.
    “Numerical simulation of displacement mechanisms for enhancing heavy oil recovery during alkaline flooding”. Energy Fuels2009, 23, 5995–6002.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Bryan, J., Wang. J., Kantzas, A.
    , “Measurement of emulsion flow in porous media: improvements in heavy oil recovery”, 6th international symposium on measurement techniques for multiphase flows; Journal of Physics, Conference Series147, 2009, 012058. doi:10.1088/1742‑6596/147/1/012058
     https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/147/1/012058 [Google Scholar]
  3. Dong, M., Qiang, L., Aifen, L.
    “Displacement mechanism of enhanced heavy oil recovery by alkaline flooding in a micromodel”, Particuology, 10–3, pp 298–305, 2012.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. DoorwarS., and Mohanty, K.
    “Pore scale fingering during viscous oil displacement”, paper presented at the International Symposium of Society Core Analysis, Austin, 18-21 September, 2011.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Doorwar, S.
    “Understanding unstable immiscible displacement in porous media”, phD dissertation2015, The University of Texas at Austin, Texas.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Doorwar, S., MohantyK.
    , “Viscous fingering function for unstable immiscible flows”, SPE JournalFebruary2017.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Emadi, A., Sohrabi, M., Hamon, G., Amiolahmady, JM
    . “Mechanistic study of oil improved heavy oil recovery by alkaline flood and wettability effects”. Society of Core Analysis, SCA20 10–13. 2010.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Fabbri, C., de Loubens, R., Skauge, A., Ormehaug, P.A., Vik, B., Burgueois, M., Morel, D., Hamon, G.
    , “Comparison of history-matched water flood, tertiary polymer flood relative permeabilities and evidence of hyteresis during tertiary polymer flood in very viscous oil”, SPE-174682-MS, SPE EOR Conference in KualaLumpur, Malaysia, 11–13 August, 2015.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Ge, J., Feng, A., Zhang, G., Jiang, P., Pei, H., Li, R., Fu, X.
    “Study of the factors influencing alkaline flooding in heavy-oil reservoirs”. Energy Fuels, 2012, 26, 2875–2882.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. GrossoJ., Briceño M., Paterno, J., Layrisse, I.
    , “Influence of Crude Oil and Surfactant Concentration on the Rheology and Flowing Properties of Heavy Crude Oil-in-Water Emulsions”, Surfactants in Solution, Volume 6, Part VIII, pp 1653-1673, 1986. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-1833-0_41
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Levit, D., Jouenne, S., Bondino, I., Gingras, J-P., Bourrel, M.
    , “The interpretation of polymer coreflood results for heavy oil”, SPE paper 150566, presented in SPE Heavy Oil Conference and Exhibition held in Kuwait, 12–14 December2011.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Loubens, R., Vaillant, G., Regaieg, M., Yang, J., Moncorgé, A., Fabbri. C., Darche, G.
    , “Numerical modelling of unstable water floods and tertiary polymer floods into highly viscous oils”, SPE-182638-MS, SPE Reservoir Simulation Conference held in Montgomery, TX, 20–22 February, 2017.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. LuoH., Mohanty, K., Delshad, M., Pope, G.
    , “Modelling and upscaling unstable water and polymer floods: dynamic characterization of the effective finger zone”, SPE paper number 179648, presented in SPE Improved Oil Recovery Conference in Tulsa, OK, 11–13 April, 2016.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. LuoH., Delshad, M., Bochao, Z., Mohanty, K.
    , ”A fractional flow theory for unstable immiscible floods”, SPE-184996-MS, Paper presented at the SPE Canada Heavy Oil Technical Conference, Calgary, 15–16 February, 2017a.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. LuoH., Li, Z., Tagavifar, M., LashgariH., Delshad, M., Pope, G., Mohanty, K.
    , “Modeling Polymer flooding with crossflow in layered reservoirs considering viscous fingering”, SPE-185017-MS, SPE Canada Heavy Oil Technical Conference, Calgary, 15–16 February, 2017b.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Kumar, R., Dao, E., Mohanty, K.K.
    “Heavy oil recovery by insitu emulsion formation”. SPE-129914. SPE Journal, June2012.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Pei, H., Zhang, G., Ge, J., Liu, X.
    “Analysis of microscopic displacement mechanisms of alkaline flooding for enhanced heavy-oil recovery”. Energy and Fuels, 2011, 25, 4423–4429.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Pei, H., Zhang, G., Ge, J., Jin, L., Ma, C.
    “Potential of alkaline flooding to enhance oil recovery through water-in-oil emulsification”. Fuel, 2013, 104, 284–293.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Pei, H., Zhang, G., Ge, J., Zhang, L., Wang, H.
    “Effect of polymer on the interaction of alkali with heavy oil and its use in improving oil recovery”. Colloids and surfaces A: Physicochem. Eng. Aspects, 2014, 446, 57–64.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Peters, E.J., Flock, D.L.
    , “The onset of instability during two phase immiscible displacement in porous media”, SPEJ, April1981.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Ponce, R-V, Carvalho, M., Alvarado, V.
    “Oil recovery modeling of macro-emulsion flooding at low capillary number”. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering, 2014, 119, 112–122.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Schramm, L.
    , “Emulsions: Fundamentals and Applications in the Petroleum Industry”, Advances in Chemistry series, 231, American Chemistry Society, 1992
     [Google Scholar]
  23. SerightR.S., Seheult, M., Talashek, T.
    “Injectivity characteristics of EOR polymer”, October2009SPE Reservoir Evaluation and Engineering.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Skauge, A., Zamani, N., Gausdal Jacobsen, J.G., Shaker Shiran, B.S., Al-Shakry, B.; Skauge, T.
    “Polymer Flow in Porous Media”. Preprints2018, 2018060015 (doi: 10.20944/preprints201806.0015.v1).
     https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints201806.0015.v1 [Google Scholar]
  25. Verzaro, F., Bourrel, M., Garnier, O., Zhou, HG., Argillier, J-F.
    “Heavy acidic oil transportation by emulsion in water”, paper presented at the SPE International Thermal Operations and Heavy Oil Symposium and International Horizontal Well Technology Conference, paper N° 78959, Alberta, Calgary, 4–7 November2002.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Wang, J., Dong, M.
    “Simulation of O/W emulsion flow in Alkaline/Surfactant flood for heavy oil recovery”. SPE-138969. Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology, 2010, 49, 6, 46–52.
     [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.201900112
Loading
Modeling Alkali-Polymer Corefloods in Viscous Oil
Conference Proceedings 2019, 1 (2019); https://doi.org/10.3997/2214-4609.201900112
/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.201900112
/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.201900112
Loading

Data & Media loading...

Most Cited This Month Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error